I'm with you on the worst. (Frankly, I don't even care for what I've heard of Peter Gabriel that much. It's not that early Genesis is bad, just that there's much more out there that's better.)
I've been catching up to 80's music (slowly) over the last decade--Meat Is Murder a good while back, Prefab Sprout a few years ago. I've only heard a little Marillion--nouveau prog--not bad, lots of fans.
I went through 200 and discovered one of my favorites at 107: Robert Wyatt's "Old Rottenhat." Not the milestone that "Rock Bottom" is, but it's one of the few in this 200 that are for adults who like to think. And the music stands on its own, not simply a vehicle for the lyrics. Of all musicians I know, Wyatt is probably the most aware of the limitations of language. Here are two selections:
"The United States of Amnesia" A savage depiction of American genocide and forgetting / denying that's as relevant in the Trumpian post-truth era as ever.
"Gharbzadegi" A rather complex song about a Persian coinage that is sometimes translated as "Westoxification" or "Westitis" to decry the encroachment of Western values. Wyatt is no fan of Western ideology, but he flips the song to point out how terminology as a form of ideology (and language in general) can become so fixed that we lose sight of the underlying reality. ("We get so out of touch, words take the place of meaning"--repeated as a kind of mantra at the end.)
