I think every generation considers the decade in which it was a teenager to be the best decade for music..I was 15 in 1980 so it was absolutely my decade.
It all went a bit shit after the end of 85 beginning of 86 though. I spent a couple of days the other week downloading most (!!!) of the then Top 40s that I liked...once I got to 1986 the songs I wanted again became fewer and fewer.
One of my top 10 desert island songs, and a contender for my favourite song ever is This is The Day by The The. It just epitomises being a teenager, in the 80s, and knowing that that day there, is the one when you're going to finally going to cob off behind the bike shed (or wherever you were cobbing off back then)
I was reading a book about Live Aid which was pretty critical of the UK music scene back then- along the lines of US Live Aid got all the mega stars and the UK one had Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones etc. it doesn't matter though how rubbish the songs and the hair were, it's just the moment that they encapsulate.
There are songs which take me back to moments-in-time in an almost visceral way....Chance by Big Country am sitting on a stone plinth in 1986 drinking gin in early May, In Between Days I'm wearing my first "trendy" leggings and am at Berlin's nightclub in Manchester and hoping desperately the trendy legging doesn't rise up and reveal an ankle. etc etc.
There's a fab book called Wired for Sound, an 80s musical childhood by Tom Bromley which is bloody marvellous. You can pick it up for about a quid on Amazon.