What’s your earliest recollection of a song that left an impression on you?

My first musical memories date back to around 1979 (age 3). I remember Top 40 radio leaving an impression on me -- disco, Olivia Newton-John, Styx, Blondie.

"Another One Bites the Dust" was the first song to register with me.

Although I don't know if that answers the question about "appreciation." I think I've always been really fascinated by music. I can't remember a time when I wasn't.

"Downtown" by Petula Clarke. My parents always had the oldies station on in the car when I were a nipper, this was on permanent rotation back then. Still sticks with me now, still think its an all-time classic.

listening to 'informer' loud on cfn radio on some sunday family drive thing through the places between towns. twisty and up-high german roads and stuff. my dad really liked that song so he turned it up really loud. i can remember that. it's just something that i remember lots. with those kinds of questions. our car had a sunroof, too.

Probably "Sing" (as in "Sing, sing a song, don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone else to hear"...hey wait, bedroom indie personified or something). That or something from Free to Be You and Me.

Fight For Your Right To Party!

I remember watching TV before I went to playschool and it was on, I then ran to the kitchen and screamed it and my brother thought this was very funny. I respect my 4 year old tastes!

The Beatles-She Loves You

I think I was 4. I remember running around the house screaming "YEAH YEAH YEAH" at the top of my lungs with my brothers and sister. We didn't know any of the other lyrics, but that was the best part, it was really exhilirating. Screaming "YEAH YEAH YEAH" was the most exciting, fun thing in the world.

I was very taken by "Our House" by Madness when I was about 5 or so. I also really dug Tell Her About It by Billy Joel when I was about 3.
My favorite band when I was little was Duran Duran, although I never had any of their albums.

I remember hearing "Cars" on the radio when I was very, very young -- this must have been a few years after its initial release. The next ones I remember after that are Eddie Rabbit's "I Love the Rainy Nights" and Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band." (We lived in New Mexico.)

something out of Grease. Summer lovin', probably.. 3 years old

'Any Way You Want It' by the Dave Clark 5!

wow, lots of youths on this thread--I was in junior high or older when many of these came out.

Probably "Across the Universe" by the beatles, my older brother was really into them and I aped his tastes as a child. Initially I liked the early stuff the best, but this song opened up my eyes to the more mystical side of the group, and led me to begin questioning things I had previously taken for granted.

Also as a young child growing up in Benton Harbor, MI I remember songs from Marvin Gaye playing on the car radio of my dad's dodge demon while I looked out the window at the hipsters and jive turkeys on the streets.

refering to madness, cars, beasties, etc. -- i was hardly in junior high when the beatles were still together.

Dare I ask what Benton Harbor was like back then?

probably not too much different from now -- very poor, mainly black, kind of like michigan's answer to gary, indiana.

I remember Visage's "Fade to Grey" scaring the piss out of me as a 5 year old. Still did, for years afterwards.

Space Oddity. I nearly cried at the end bit where he gets stuck in space when I was young. My folks had a Bowie best of on vinyl. They still do, actually.

The Beatles-She Loves You
I am thinking of making two tapes for my 40th birthday next year with one song for each year. She Loves You will be the first song for 1963. Absolutely fabulous. Probably the best song of all. And a nice start title-wise for a life on the planet earth...

Mom singing "You are My Sunshine"... awwwwwwwww. but it was a total = dud.

Just kidding, Mom! (and don't try googling me again!)

The '60s skipped our house, so I grew up listening to my dad's records from the '50s, most saliently the old doowop novelty tune "Stranded in the Jungle" by the Cadets. I could still sing you most of it.

"crimson and clover" by tommy james and the shondells, at around the same time as "burning down the house" by the talking heads.

and "let's hear it for the boy" by denise williams.

In kindergarden class, the colledge aged teachers played Bangles - "Walk Like an Egyptian" a few times, and taught us the dance, and we all danced around.
I also remember my mother listening to Phillip Glass at a fairly young age.
and on my Commadore 64 I hate synth sampler program with songs like OMD - "Enola Gay" and Vagelis, and Oxygene, and a few others that were a big influence. I've always loved 80s snyth music since.

Hey! Girls just wanna have fun! dont they? Well, I am a boy, but that song just grabbed me and took me away dancing when I was 7 years old. It left me with very vivid images, considering I heard it for the first time by seeing its ever-amazing video, during a video marathon night a tv station had played - that was in 1984, and Mtv was not available in Montreal, so videos really were rare on the air, a hyped but unseen novelty. This video, this music was like an opening in a fence, giving me access to the strange and fascinating world of adults in which pretty girls with punky looks just wanted to have fun. How terribly cliché... This still haunts me today.

"I Feel Love" by Donna Summer

"The Beatles-She Loves You
I think I was 4. I remember running around the house screaming "YEAH YEAH YEAH" at the top of my lungs"

I am reliably informed that my very first words were "Yeah, yeah" and of course "yeah", as I lay in my pram listening to the Fab Four on the radio whilst simultaneously developing a very early prototypical horizontal version of what was later to become known as "pogoing".

"I am thinking of making two tapes for my 40th birthday next year with one song for each year. She Loves You will be the first song for 1963"

What an excellent idea Alex, I think I'll do that myself!

Will you be chosing the songs based on your tastes at the time 'though or based on your tastes *NOW*?

This is very important as it will mean a crucial difference between me alienating the vast majority of my assembled friends and relatives on the 5th song (which based on my tastes at the time would probably have to be something like Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, whereas based on my tastes now it would have to be Electricity by Captain Beefheart) or not until the 14th (which either way would be New Rose by The Damned)!

Not sure if this is quite what you mean, but I vividly remembering arguing with Keir in Primary School Infants' class about whether there were any words to Yellow Submarine apart from 'we all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine'. I said there were, he said there weren't, I was right.

He went on to be something very influential in the 23 Skidoo/Throbbing Gristle scene; I went to be an occasional poster on ILM. The moral?

Foreigner, "Juke Box Hero". Don't just dream it, be it.

maybe "carrie" by cliff richard.

"fade to grey" also scared me! other songs i remember liking are "moonlight shadow" by mike oldfield, "avalon" by roxy music, "if i was" by midge ure, "got my mind set on you" by george harrison and sadly, "invisible touch" by genesis. my ma says i used to sing along with the george harrison song. i grew up in the 80s, listening to the radio. i bet you couldn't tell! ;)

Very earliest memory is listening to 'Living Doll' by Cliff Richard on living room stereo and falling madly in love with it, aged about 3 or 4. I still think it's a great song.

A little later was an 80s best of by Tina Turner which scared me a little - giving me the fear that all women, except mother of course, were ball-breaking Thatcherite bitches in red stockings and suspenders. Still, I remember wanting to go to a club for a private dancer and start dating hardfaced executives who lived in skyscrapers.

My parents owned about 4 cds during my childhood, the aforementioned Tina album, a Motown compilation, a Smokey Robinson compilation and a couple of Michael Jackson albums. So I grew up listening to Smokey's yearning ballads (and that great one about a monkey!) which has given me a problematic idealised view of romantic love.

After that was a couple of novelty songs, 'Star Trekkin', the Edelweiss song and the Paula Abdul (Belinda Carlisle?) song with the cartoon cat. Then, due to Sinead O Connor's shiney head being thrust in my face for what seemed like forever whilst at my grans on a Saturday I decided to develop a major hatred for music until the age of 14, at which time I was acne-ridden and bitter and forced myself to like Radiohead, Nirvana and Terrovision.

When I was a little boy, my Mom would play me Beatles songs on the piano. I remember "Fool on the Hill" leaving a distinct impression, and how struck I was at the contrast of how happy the verses sounded and how sad the chorus sounds (reading from the songbook "the fool on the hill, sees the sun going down..." didn't help matters).

It wasn't until a few years later that I heard the actual Beatles track, and it didn't have the same effect as hearing Mom play it on the piano without the words...actually, it sounded way too innocuous to me.

Meanwhile, at the same time, my Dad would be indoctrinating me to the Incredible String Band's "El Wool Suite". :)

My brother had a Cars tape that he played quite a bit when I was three or four, and the synth line to "Just What I Needed" haunted me throughout my childhood (it was the only part of the song I could remember.) When I heard the song again ten years later it was one the most surreal moments of my life.

Cheers to everyone digging up old threads tonight.

This is an easy question for me. "Feel for You" by Chaka Khan. I still think of it as a perfect song. Think of all the elements at work: melody by Prince. Harmonica by Stevie Wonder. Gloriously rudimentary rapping by Grandmaster. Even at the age of... oh, I must have been six or seven... this gave me a warm feeling inside. Still does.

my parents (still married at the time) were driving me to an appointment at the pediatrician. i can't remember if i was sick, or it was just a check-up. anyway, "loving you" by minnie ripperton came on the radio. it kind of freaked me out. i might have been three or four years old at the time.

10cc's "I'm Not in Love" spooked me as a little kid. you can probably guess which part. 'be quiet, be quiet. big boys don't cry'

my favorite record was a dick hyman moog record my dad had, but one of the songs scared me, and i could never make it all the way through. I think it was 'kolumbo' or something like that. i was also into an arthur lyman record my dad owned ('taboo'?). i was a sucker for the bird calls...

as far as music that DIDN'T scare me at the time, but made a big impression, that would probably be "let 'em in" by macca, and everything but everything by the Beatles...

someone mentioned 'space oddity'. i heard that the other day on the radio and it really freaked me out. i think that part where he's becoming marooned is a musical approximation of what it must feel like to be on the verge of dying.

the earliest song to annoy me was probably that boz scaggs "Lido" thing, or whatever it's called.

Ah, but Boz Scagg's "Lowdown" is another early memory of mine, and a totally great song.

And I have this vague recollection of being in the back seat loudly singing "Ain't nothin' gonna break-a my stride / Nobody gonna slow me down / Oh no / I got to keep on movin'." And then my dad loudly told me to shut up.

some of mine are pretty embarrassing ... my mom tells me that i used to really like Jim Nabors when i was a kid (used to dance when he came on laugh-in). thankfully, i don't remember this at all. i also remember liking "tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak tree."

as fer the good stuff -- (a) i remember playing boston's "more than a feeling" for my 1st grade show-and-tell; (b) first record i bought (with my allowance $$) was stevie wonder's "you are the sunshine of my life"; (c) some camp counselor playing "stairway to heaven" on his guitar and me thinking that it was the coolest thing i'd ever heard.

It was Pete Seegers"Little Boxes" on my "Close'n'play" record player. "...little boxes little boxes on the hillside and there all made out of ticky-tacky" I played the grooves out on it I'm sure. I remember asking mom what he was singing about.

*so mom the people live in boxes? why? are they poor? why do they come out all the same? are the boxes like EZ-Bake ovens*

My older cousin played Beauty and the Beat for me when I was around 7-8. I was already in love with the Beatles and Blondie, but that was the first time I felt like if I didn't have an album, I would die.