Agree.  If anything the 70's were a lot more interesting than the 80's for music.  Early 70's in fact all across the board including all genres, was pretty impressive.  Some of my favorite recordings seem to land around 1972 for some reason...that was really a banner year.  Later 70's for me was less interesting, since both the Eagles and the Bee Gees (with that disco nonsense) seemed to dominate/pollute the soundwaves.   Great Jazz too...ever heard Ornette Coleman's "New York is Now" or "Love Call"? 

The 80's just about uniformly, had terrible sounds, because musicians seemed to come to the conclusion that any sound made by humans was insufficient, and that machines did it better.   That synth sound evokes total nausea for me.  Most drum tracks on pop albums left out the balls of that instrument, with some tinny tapping sound replacing it..(Hughie Lewis, Bruce Hornsby...oh gawd what shite), and the guitarz...I mean wha?  Way too much emphasis on chorus and schlocky effects, and a new "rule": no decent lead on any tracks. 

So yeah, I concur, the 80's by and large BLEW for pop music, at least for me.  Truthfully (and not because this is a DB site), D and D were the first breath of fresh air for me during that period.    Jazz had it's moments though.  I know Pat Metheny group got overly commercialized, but they did play great music, and I became kind of an ECM victim, listening to a lot of John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner and their various spinoffs.  I think I own a small percentage of ECM by now.

G