Now '87

Radio 2 mounted a big poll this afternoon to determine the best ever year for British popular music. The winner, perhaps unsurprisingly, was 1967. Indeed none of the top five hailed from any later than 1973. Bizarrely 2005 was one of the ones you could vote for, and how that made it through to the final round I've no idea - especially as it edged out the one I would've voted for if I could: 1987.

I have no truck with people who say the 1980s were shit for music; quite the opposite. I always say it was the best decade for music, because it was the one I grew up in. And I reckon, deep down, the same goes for everyone. The best decade for music, for TV, for film, for anything, is always the one in which fell your formative years. Admit it! This was the stuff that made you, and hence the stuff of which dreams are made. And the soundtrack of those years were, to shamelessly nick another phrase, songs that made you cry and the songs that saved your life.