"Idol's catalogue is worthy of a re-appraisal nowadays. Hell, in today's lousy music scene, it sounds like Mozart."
While I wouldn't go quite that far - some of today's music, as ever, is very good - I do think there's a lot of music from the 80s that hasn't gotten the respect that it deserves. There was a lot of interesting and innovative music done in the 80s, innovations that mostly aren't seen in today's music.
I think a big decline occurred when Michael Jackson and Madonna became popular.