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[BillyH]

I've seen a few "Best years for music" thread, and the usual happens - someone will say "2014 because One Direction is teh awesome!!11", someone else will call them an idiot and talk about how wonderful 1981 was, someone else will call them an idiot and go into a huge essay about the classics of 1927, big argument, eventual group understanding that everyone's tastes are subjective and every year has good and bad music, etc etc, until someone starts the same thread subject a few weeks later and it all kicks off again

So I thought I'd flip it round and ask what years people think were actually less good than others. As with best years it is of course completely subjective and someone's absolute musical pinnacle will be someone else's worst, but could be interesting either way. Here are some of mine and if you feel like recommending me some good songs in any of these years, then please feel free - let's try that with as many as we can!

First off, 1985 is the weakest year of that decade for me. You've got the synthpop brilliance of 1981-82 and a lot of 1983, and everything from 1987 onwards is golden all the way through, but looking at the biggest-sellers of '85 there's less there than any other years - it seems to be a lot of rock ballads and Band Aid bandwagon-jumping charity singles. To be fair, Jennifer Rush's 'The Power Of Love' is one of the best power ballads EVER MADE and you've also got You Spin Me Round, There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) and a bit of a guilty pleasure with Baltimora's 'Tarzan Boy', but otherwise little I've heard from '85 interests me and this is from someone who, while not born at the time, did catch the repeat of that year's Christmas Top of the Pops when Channel 5 showed it a few years back. 1986 isn't the best either but it has the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and New Order's 'Bizarre Love Triangle' as strong foundations.

Next is 1992. Again there are some good songs up there with the best of the 80s - 'Stay', 'Out of Space', and the ahead-of-its-time dance pounder that is Fellix's 'Don't You Want Me'. Otherwise it's dull ballads, a ton of old re-issued songs and the year rave music, having absolutely owned the second half of 1991, turned into something of a joke with the likes of Sesame Street, Tetris and Super Mario cash-ins. I suppose there's still Acen's Trip II The Moon, Praga Khan's Injected With A Poison etc, but there's more classics in late 1991 than there is for the whole of '92. 1993 isn't massively better but there's a ton of good Eurodance, the album 'Very' by the PSBs and the (extremely) early stirrings of Britpop.

For the noughties, 2005. I would have said 2004 for a while but that's just looking at the number #1s, otherwise some of the best tracks of the decade can be found lower down the 2004 charts. Not so much for 2005 which saw a stale pop scene past its sell-by-date, the worst dance music's probably ever been in its loop-a-sample-for-three-minutes phase, leaving some admittedly brilliant indie-rock but even that's not as good as the two years either side. Oh, and the Crazy Frog. Barely anything released in 2005 I would say was among the best of the noughties, maybe Erasure's 'Breathe' and the whole of Pendulum's 'Hold Your Colour' album. 2006 is better, 2007 not quite as much but there's some great stuff at the end of that year.

What are some of your least favourite years for chart music? Bearing in mind if anyone mentions 1999 (my favourite chart year ever) expect a huge list from me