The 80s was also shit at pop, IMO. Unless you consider bands like Talking Heads and Genesis pop, but their music was, respectively, new wave and progressive rock merely appropriating some 80s pop elements.
80s was likely the golden Era of pop, so I'm going to have to disagree. I really love New Wave/Synth pop which are shoot off of late 70s punk, no wave and bands like Talking Heads and Genesis. ..Genesis is definitely pop, especially their later stuff. I like the Human League, Howard Jones, Til Tuesday, Duran Duran, Blondie, The Clash, The Church, and songs like Mexican Radio, Pop Musik, and Heart and Soul.
People would also assuredly shout you down over Prince, Madonna and Michael Jackson.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the 80s were also the beginning of college music/alt rock, with some cross over to pop (Duran Duran being a good example of pop/alt rock cross over and also New Order the remaining members of Joy Division). I really like the gothic/horror/whatever streak from the 80s through the early 90s, lots of songs about supernatural stuff, ranging from The Cures Charlotte Sometimes to Bauhaus Bela Legosi is Dead. ..which reached into the 90s with Concrete Blonde.
What I WILL agree with is that corporate radio in the late 80s was complete and utter shit, there was some really terrible annoying pop in the mid to late 80s, which is likely what gave us the alternative movement first in radio, then as a loose genre. To this day people still use the word, I've seen it applied to Lana del Rey. ..though I think as a genre title it's fairly meaningless in 2016, compared to what it meant in 1990.
