Okay, so, I went off on this jaunt through YouTube. I listened to the 80s, year by year, and you know what? I could give you 100 songs that confirm the article and 100 more that make it sound stupid.
I have no idea why it rings so false except to say, I lived through the 80s, as well as the 70s, the 90s, the 00s and what we've got of the 10s so far and I just didn't remember the 80s being that bad. I also listened to just about everything from the 60s, the 50s and most of the 40s. All of the above, for sure, in terms of pop music and Billboard top 100s but also a lot of stuff that never made the radio.
Perhaps it's nostalgia, perhaps there's something to my gut feeling. I recall that during the 80s, I spent as much time thinking that music was terrible as I did thinking that it was great. It was only in retrospect that I learned to appreciate some of that terrible stuff and that I put some of that formerly great stuff into proper perspective as being pretty terrible. So, maybe not entirely nostalgia...
In any case, on my trip through the 80s, I certainly found a lot that I believe holds up to the test of time. I could easily pick a dozen tunes out of there, play them for today's teenagers and expect that they'd either already know or instantly love at least 8-10 of them. Does that invalidate the article? No. Math is math, science is science. They got the results they got.
Does that invalidate my original point? Not in the slightest. They made an algorithm that measured the metrics they program it to measure. They didn't say anything at all about either the subjective or the objective value of the music. All they did was count notes and measure ranges. Nothing in their program had anything to do with feeling or with influence or with timelessness.
And no, I'm not going to paste you the list of songs that was going to be my response. Go to YouTube and type in "Depeche Mode" (or "The Police" or "Cyndi Lauper" or "U2" or "Joan Jett" or "Michael Jackson" or or or) and in an hour you'll have the same list I have.