-Shows like Married with Children, TMNT and Full House premiered.

-The start of trashy talk shows with Geraldo and Morton Downey Jr.

-All those celebrity sex scandals

-Proto 90s songs here and there

-The cold war was just about over

I'm sure there's probably a few more things.


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But music and fashion was still very much 80s.

Rap and heavy metal started becoming more mainstream too.

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This came out in 1987 and to me looked and sounded 90s.

But for the most part the music at the time was very 80s.

Rap and heavy metal started becoming more mainstream too.


Heavy metal was pretty mainstream in the 70s too. The original wave, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, etc. And, of course, Led Zeppelin.

-Shows like Married with Children, TMNT and Full House premiered.

-The start of trashy talk shows with Geraldo and Morton Downey Jr.

-All those celebrity sex scandals

-Proto 90s songs here and there

-The cold war was just about over

I'm sure there's probably a few more things.


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I disagree completely. Other than the TV show debuts you mentioned (that aren't really that representative of the 90s anyway) the things you describe are not really previews of the 90s, but are all defining aspects of late 80s culture. The Cold War was beginning to wind down with the INF treaty, but it definitely wasn't over until the fall of the Berlin Wall two years later, don't know why you'd consider celebrity sex scandals to be a sign of 90s culture nor the debut of certain trashy talk shows, and I can't think of any songs in 1987 that truly sound 90s, sure rap was becoming somewhat more prominent but it still sounded worlds apart from any rap that would soon become popular in the next few years when acts like Dr Dre, Tupac and Snoop Dogg introduced the more cutting edge sound to the genre.

I disagree completely. Other than the TV show debuts you mentioned (that aren't really that representative of the 90s anyway) the things you describe are not really previews of the 90s, but are all defining aspects of late 80s culture. The Cold War was beginning to wind down with the INF treaty, but it definitely wasn't over until the fall of the Berlin Wall two years later, don't know why you'd consider celebrity sex scandals to be a sign of 90s culture nor the debut of certain trashy talk shows, and I can't think of any songs in 1987 that truly sound 90s, sure rap was becoming somewhat more prominent but it still sounded worlds apart from any rap that would soon become popular in the next few years when acts like Dr Dre, Tupac and Snoop Dogg introduced the more cutting edge sound to the genre.


I was thinking the same thing about the Cold War. In 1987 people still acted like some kind of nuclear war between the US ad the USSR was still an imminent possibility. It wasn't until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the USSR in 1991 that the Cold war cooled off.

As for celebrity sex scandals, maybe OP meant in the 90s they started being covered more as if they were real news. Culminating with the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal in 1998 and the advent of TMZ in 2005. And, at some point along the way, TMZ somehow became considered  a "real news source". People quote "according to TMZ..." as if that's the official word on things.

Rap and heavy metal started becoming more mainstream too.



It was close to the end of that old school flavor.