‘That’s entertainment’ was the message of the year but not as Paul Weller intended it, for in 1986 popular music was closer to mass entertainment as Declan McManus’ pater knew it than any year since Elvis Presley swivelled his hips on the Ed Sullivan show.

With the exception of a few diehard successes like the Smiths, the Pogues, Billy Bragg and the Housemartins, this year saw a widening abyss between the charts and cult values as popular innovation shrivelled in the face of a planet pop and all Next Big Things seemed postponed till the millennium.

The safest professional values proliferated but, worse, amateurism generally equated with incompetence and indulgence rather than inspiration, a predicament misguided by the confused antics of the British indies – but a few brave souls in Melody Maker – as their combined circulations continued to shrink. In my worst moments, I could even fear that after twenty years’ efficient service, the British conveyor-belt for new talent was finally starting to rust and run down.

For the most part, British mainstream bands like the lamentable It Bites were even more toothless than their American counterparts. The so-called noise bands were, of course, content to be discontented in their own indie ghetto – which left the equally so-called shamblin’ bands signalling some strange lack of will and ambition in the UK.

Ultimately one had to admit that in the competitive, trendsaturated late Seventies, the whole movement would have received less space than power-pop but in ’86, the fact that it was one of the very few critic’s games in town meant it was a sign of artistic exhaustion. Six years of Thatcher and Reagan in tandem may have been a quiescent audience without either the optimism or appetite for larger than-life heroes or experiences. Certainly, though both cheap production and musical immaturity may have been partially responsible, they seemed to want to reduce music to a smaller, more manageable scale of being, while the isolationist Little England stance of these bands was a self-conscious exile from pop imperialism, a reaction against the rhetoric of the Durans, Spandaus and Whams.

Such anti-heroism could be a respectable, sensible response against the big bad pop that connived in its exploitation by Fleet St, yet with it went a sexlessness that appeared odd to any Irish person since our musicians had become increasingly entangled in our sexual and spiritual crises, allying their force, as in the divorce referendum, to battles that elsewhere had been fought and won through the Sixties. But these new British bands were not only post-pop, they were also the post-liberationist children of the Sixties, products of a liberal education but squashed by a restrictive economy. A squeam/shness about page three girls might be understandable; their shyness about admitting sex is always on the agenda, less so. These bands preferred to tend their gardens not slay any dragons.

In the midst of such timorousness, Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s intentions were usefully dishonourable. But after launching themselves with more hype than the Progressive Democrats, they dismally spluttered out on the starting-blocks for lack of any high-octane musical fuel in their futuristically imagined engines. Instead although his music was more a triumph of flash pop form over content, it was Tony james’ former Generation X associate, Billy Idol who scooped the pool. Indeed with The Damned also having a useful year, it was a good climate for old punk tarts from the poppier end of the spectrum – while Dr and the Medics also proved the value of not taking yourself seriously.

The other major controversy surrounded Hip-Hop as, with Aerosmith’s help, Run, DMC charted with ‘Walk This Way’. Like all styles as they’ve passed their first heady, risk-taking formative stages, it was now a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly. The rappers and D.J.’s might still be on the leading edge of American black music but that didn’t make them infallible as they were still prone to make a fetish of their machines, furiously scratching at their society’s sores for lack of any ability to heal them.

Elsewhere on the dance-floor, beige was still beautiful with what seemed an endless succession of sweetened one-hit wonders. In a more bracingly traditional vein, Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk’s ‘Love Can’t Turn Around’ found the incomparable Daryl Pandy reviving the spirit of Screaming Jay Hawkins as the camp Dr. Feelgood of the disco, bellowing up the octaves and then falling to the Top Of The Pops stage in the most hilariously compelling and heart-warming television performance of the year.

Meanwhile Aretha Franklin followed Tina Turner’s lead in the soul senior’s championship while, with ‘Word Up’, Cameo followed such earlier Eighties luminaries as Chic as the crossover Funk Band it was hip for all to like. But Man of the Year in this demesne just had to be Prince, zig-zagging back to funk of teasing economy and elegance with ‘Kiss’ and ‘Boys And Girls’ and then winning the freedom of London with a series of matchless concerts that sealed his reputation as the most complete new star of the Eighties.

Yet it was highly calculating pop values that predominated. Even if singles sales were falling, they remained both an essential promotional tool and the likeliest location of most (ch)artists’ best work. For instance who could now patronise Madonna after ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ while Status Quo ‘In The Army Now’ was a perfect example of the surprise of pop exactly because it came from such an unlikely source, a band oft accused of pandering to macho working-class values who turned the tables with an untypical tale of doubt. And the Communards with Sarah Jane Morris on ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ proved it was still possible to combine teenage party spirit with a cunningly measured, subliminal additive of sexual politics.

But am I searching for crumbs of consolation? For the lack of alternatives have I been distracted by too many minor professional pleasures, existing on a diet i would have barely tolerated in other years? For instance, an MT USA record like Bob Seger’s ‘Like A Rock’ wouldn’t even have rated among my secondary singles but in ’86, it just slips in as an example of career endurance and sincerity, a typical token of a period when I ended up half-heartedly admiring the sleight of hand of the cleverer survivors, for lack of any vital new values.

For though both R.E.M. and the Bangles prospered, another highly-touted movement bit the dust as the American public initialled in the likes of WASP rather than REM’s progeny. Again insofar as useful new American music counted, it was veterans like Talking Heads and the Pretenders who continued to catch public attention.

Back in the UK, misfortune of the year was the demise of Madness. There is a faint hope that the Housemartins might replace them but am I the only one who suspects something forced about their jollity? A less notice British phenomenon was the roots revival led by Billy Bragg and the Pogues – whose failure with ‘Haunted’ was among the minor tragedies of the year – which also opened up a new audience for Christy moore.

Mention of Moore bring us home to Ireland. Major stories were the sad death of Phil Lynott – did our first martyr mean Irish rock had matured? – Chris De Burgh’s final conquest of Britain with ‘The Lady In Red’, Queen’s damp squib at Slane, the increased if artistically uneven recording activity in all areas, ‘Self Aid’ and U2’s involvement in the American Amnesty tour.

It was a year to note the business consequences of U2’s achievements, as international companies trawled Ireland for talent and a batallion of hopefuls busied themselves in rehearsal rooms the length and breadth of the country. Though some of its proceeds have since gone to musical projects, I still think Self Aid could have been more skillfully handled, while its superior musical moments came from the more experienced hands. Like U2 themselves, who also demolished lazy assumptions about them on TV Gaga and whose most significant public activity was Abroad on that Amnesty Tour, persuading MTV who had been notoriously shallow in their Live Aid coverage to give it their full backing, a notable coup in the depoliticised U.S.A.

Live there were many magic moments: Van Morrison, We Free Kings, regular doses of Mary Coughlan and the Golden Horde and, of course, the Waterboys’ tour – Capt. Scott’s highly successful expedition around Ireland. But in early ’87 will come the real test of our recording wealth: U2, Christy moore, and the Virgin triad of Light A Big Fire, In Tua Nua and Microdisney all have albums set for spring release, with others to follow.

We are lucky in one sense that we don’t suffer the same deep divide between pop professionalism and indie amateurism that currently disfigures the British scene. Nonetheless there are still too many second-hand roses insufficiently determined to find original sources for which to develop. They might take a lead from my Man Of The Year: Elvis Costello.

With two magnificent albums, an audaciously novel tour and, of course, as Irish marriage, Costello proved it was still possible to unify all the values: to be artistically daring without being indulgent or exclusive; to fuse both humour and heart; to be professional without being a record company mercenary; to be both intimate and authorities; and finally to retain all rock’s blazing attack without forfeiting any of his soul. Really, my year ended at the Olympia about 11 on Wednesday, 3rd December.

Surely ‘I Want You’ was the performance that explained all that was missing in ’86.