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If you are old enough to remember both decades, how different were say 1985 to 1995 or 1983 to 1993?
It may be good to break things down by subject. As far as politics things were shaped by the Cold War. In 1985 that was when the Soviets were the enemy(reflected in movies and tv shows of that era). By the late 80's the Soviet Union had collpased so by 1995 America had no particular enemy. So all the anxieties that came with the Soviets being "the enemy" were gone. So to me this led to the 90's being more relaxed. Think about it this way. Other than his affairs,Bill Clinton didn't have much drama during his time in the 90's.
It may be good to break things down by subject. As far as politics things were shaped by the Cold War. In 1985 that was when the Soviets were the enemy(reflected in movies and tv shows of that era). By the late 80's the Soviet Union had collpased so by 1995 America had no particular enemy. So all the anxieties that came with the Soviets being "the enemy" were gone. So to me this led to the 90's being more relaxed. Think about it this way. Other than his affairs,Bill Clinton didn't have much drama during his time in the 90's.
Actually the USSR collapsed in 1991, but the Eastern Bloc itself showed the first chinks in the armor around ~1988 or so. But in a way the Cold War didn't end until 1994 when the last Russian troops left Eastern Europe.
80s music: Disco rapidly died in the U.S. at the beginning of the decade (it remained relatively strong in Europe, as well as among gays in the U.S., where it transformed into different genres). Genres which characterize this decade include synthesizer-driven new wave (bands like New Order and a-Ha) and glam rock (Poison and Whitesnake). Pure/soft pop also was strong in the 80s (Cyndi Lauper, Rick Astley).
One of the singers in this genre was Madonna, who was the inspiration for such recent stars as Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, and Rihanna. Madonna was shocking during her early years and seemed to set a precedent for the sexualized female star. Becoming a sex object now seems obligatory if a female wants to stay popular beyond her first hit single.
Hip-hop had its first mainstream hits with Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" around 1979-80. The genre seemed mainly confined to urban areas, but its mainstream popularity took off late in the decade.
The main method of finding new music seemed to be whatever they played on the radio and word of mouth, or your friend's mixtape. People were more unified in their tastes at the time.
The primary format of recorded music during the 80's transitioned from LP to portable audiocassette. Much of it lied in the convenience of the cassette tape: it was small, could be played virtually everywhere with the introduction of the Walkman, and could also record songs off the radio. LP's remained popular with audiophiles, due to the low fidelity of tapes, and deejays. A new digital format, the CD, was also introduced in the early 80's; it offered superior sound quality to tapes, but became a point of contention among audiophiles, but both the media and the players remained expensive throughout the decade.
This is also the decade when most of the music stations remaining on AM transferred over to FM.
90s music: The 90s started out with a distinct sound, perhaps carried over from the late 80s (just as the current style dates from about 2009), and inspired by the raves and techno music of England and the sounds of hip-hop, with artists like Marky Mark, C+C Music Factory, Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, Technotronic, Black Box, and Snap!. The hit songs were mostly inoffensive party music, with few mentions of sex and virtually no references to violence, or even the popular rave drugs of the time.
There was also at least one HUGE boy band in the early 1990s, New Kids on the Block.
With the riots in South Central LA in 1992, gangster rap broke out of its urban cage and infected the ears of suburban and rural youth who had nothing to do with the lifestyle. Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre became household names. Urban fashions, such as baggy jeans, became popular, although this might have to do with the skater culture too.
The "urban cowboy" trend put country music clubs into the cities around this time.
While all of this was going on, a new rock style, "grunge", and to a lesser extent, the culture surrounding it, blew up on the scene, with its chief exponent being Kurt Cobain and his band Nirvana. Cobain's suicide in 1994 seemed to lead, or coincide with, the death of grunge as a popular music style.
The early to mid 90s were the setting for female R & B bands popular with white youth, such as Salt N' Pepa and TLC. They sang about female empowerment, probably in the context of urban Afro-American life, but their popularity was widespread. Brandy, Monique, and Destiny's Child continued in their tradition in the late 90's. Mariah Carey was also popular throughout the decade, the mixed-race singer tending towards pop rather than R&B.
Radio-friendly pop-rock dominated the pop airwaves in the mid-1990s, with Hootie & the Blowfish, Goo Goo Dolls, and Matchbox 20 being among the bigger acts.
Eurodance acts like Real McCoy, La Bouche, and 2 Unlimited, a natural progression from artists like Snap! and Black Box, received some minor airplay with their infectious hooks and ~135 bpm beat around the 1993 to 1997 period. Unlike Europe, Canada, and much of Latin America, where this type of music reigned supreme in the early-mid 90s, it was mostly relegated to basketball and hockey games and compilations like Jock Jams in the U.S., some dance clubs, and the movie A Night at the Roxbury.
Rap continued to be a major force, although it represented a market separate from pop-rock. Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., both assassinated, were major icons in mid-90s rap. Their videos played on MTV (which played about an hour or two's worth of music videos during the daytime then) and heavily edited versions of their songs played on the radio.
Coolio, however, was the ultimate pop-rapper of this era with his hit "Gangsta's Paradise".
The end of the 1990s saw a shift towards teen pop, often produced by Max Martin. The first boy band of this period was Hanson, but two later groups, the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC came to dominate the charts and the hearts of tween girls. The girl band Spice Girls was very popular during this period. The boy/girl-band phenomenon spawned countless groups: 98 Degrees, LFO, Westlife, B*Witched, O-Town, etc. Some unique groups in this period, whose CDs almost everybody on my school bus owned, include Aqua, a Danish-Norwegian bubblegum group best know for their hit "Barbie Girl", and Chumbawumba, best known for their "Tubthumping (I Get Knocked Down)".
The late 90s also featured the return of clean rap in the form of Will Smith, and a number of short-lived bands and singers such as Jimmy Ray and Marcy Playground.
The last year of the '90s brought Latin stars like Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Enrique Iglesias to the top of the charts as they made their debut to the Anglo crowd in English. 1999 also brought us the rise of Nu-Metal (Limp Bizkit), the first serious white rapper in a long time (Eminem), and Woodstock '99.
As for technologies: Cassette tapes dominated the early 90s. In the mid-90s, the prices of CD players fell dramatically and portable CD players began to incorporate shock protection, and cassette tapes were soon obsolete, though most home stereo systems consisted of a receiver, tape deck, and CD player. Event deejays switched from LP to Minidisc and CD. CD-R drives (burners) and blank media began to appear on computers at electronics stores in 1997, and were very common on new computers by 1999.
I recall the early 1980's as being the heyday of "New Wave" - Blondie, The Pretenders, Gary Numan, The Cars, Missing Persons, Sniff and the Tears, etc. It seemed to coexist with more traditional rock of the time such as Van Halen, Rainbow, Triumph and (then new) Pat Benatar.
I remember some '80's fads that came and went - "Members Only" jackets, shoulder pads, leg warmers, parachute pants, break dancing, the "Miami Vice" look, etc. etc.
My God! The style police should have been called. Arrests would have been made.
I was around in both the '80's & '90's - re: CD's & DVD's:
Though the first CD's & CD players came out in 1982 (at least in the U.S.), IIRC both the CD players & CD's themselves were quite expensive at the time. Most people I knew had CD players by the late '80's, but then again they were big music fans (I was in high school during this time). I myself didn't get my first CD player until the early '90's, when the prices went down.
IMHO, DVD's took time to catch on as well, but probably less time than CD's. The first DVD player & DVD's came out in 1997 in the U.S. (1996 in Japan). The first time I knew of anyone that had a DVD player was a friend who had it built into her computer (though it wasn't a stand-alone player) back in '99. I myself didn't get my first DVD player until 2003, and even at that time I knew people who hadn't gotten one, but were still watching VHS at that point.
Without a doubt, the evolution of computers and electronics in the 1980s and 1990s changed the world. To be sure, music and fashion changed over the two decades, but not significantly. I had my first personal computer in the early 1980s, and by the mid-1990s, the Internet began to be widespread.
This is also the decade when most of the music stations remaining on AM transferred over to FM.
During the 80s this is pretty much correct. During the 90s the big thing about radio was when the FCC had started to allow a single company to buy multiple radio stations in one market which gave rise to such companies as Clear Channel ( now Iheart Media ), Entercom, Town Square, Radio One, even CBS & ABC Disney started to grab stations right and left. There is still debate to this day as to whether it was a good idea or a horrible mistake on the part of the FCC to allow a single company to take over so many radio stations in a single market.
I was a kid in the 80's and a young man in the 90's (which is to say, from my present viewpoint, still a kid), and I can honestly say both times were better than today.
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