I've been trying to think of music from the 80s that I really really like. So far what I've been able to come up with is Metallica and the Replacements. Although, I don't think I heard the Replacements at all until the 90s and I barely heard Metallica either until the 90s. There's Dio era Sabbath which is fuck*ng awesome, but Sabbath also gave us Eternal Idol and Headless Cross in the 80s so, you know, it's a mixed bag. I like Motley Crue and Tom Petty, they're pretty rad, but really, if that's the best the 80s had to offer... In retrospect I like most of what Neil Young did in the 80s, but at the time I thought he was losing it.
Edit: Weird Al! Okay, the 80s have been redeemed.
Edit 2: I just sorted my iTunes by year and looked at what I have from the 80s. Okay, my argument falls apart completely. There is a shit ton of awesome music in there from the 80s. But to be fair to myself, there's a lot of it that I was either not cool enough to listen to at the time or had never heard of.
Seriously though, the 80s gave us Stevie Nicks and Phil Collins. Fuck that decade.