What was your first favorite song?

Ooooh. I forgot about this one. My grandparents had the single (probably one of my uncles left it with them) and I remember the cousins all getting together in the basement to dance our fannies off to it. Ooh Eee Ooh ah ah...

Maybe Dire Straits?

I grew up listening to albums, as the CBC was the only radio station my parents would have on. It's tricky to pin down a song.

can't listen to it anymore as it makes me cry INSTANTLY.

This was me at age 10, and while I owned one LP (Dino, Desi, and Billy) and a few singles, I don't remember liking any of them as favorites.

"Glory of Love" by Peter Cetera, "Eat It" by Weird Al Yankovic, "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel and "Michelle" by The Beatles were also favorites of mine when my brain was still soft.

I mention this because I recently picked up the first season of "Crime Story" on dvd, and I was shocked at how stiff and crappy Todd's cover sounds today.

xpost

Other than that it would have probably been something off the old scratched early Beach Boys and Beatles LPs and I borrowed from my parents when I got my first stereo the next year.

Oh and the copy of Horowitz Plays Mozart that my grandmother got me for Christmas that same year. I had to listen to that on my dad's stereo because I didn't have a CD player (it was 1988), but I liked to lie on the couch and close my eyes while I listened to it.

As far back as I can remember.

I just thought this was the greatest song in the world when I was a little kid. I considered this supreme rock and roll.

I had a babysitter by that name who used to let me light her cigarettes.

I should add that she was fired when my mother discovered this.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000001FNE.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

...which, I believe, contained both "I Started a Joke" and "Gotta Get a Message to You", both of which resonate with childhood memories for me. In retrospect, that cover's a bit of a ripoff of Revolver, isn't it.

There's a thread right there!

she made me feel like a man (or, at five years old, at least a male)

my first favorite song was "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister

My first favorite song -- most probably "Riders on the Storm" by The Doors, followed immediately by "Stop! In the Name of Love" by The Supremes and "Bernadette" by The Four Tops. All of these songs I remember grooving along to when I was... oh, maybe five years old. When the rest of my classmates were proclaiming their love for Michael Jackson and Madonna. Apparently I was the weird one from that point on, since this was the "oh, the oldies are SO not cool" mid '80s. Heh.

Bumping this potentially fun thread because of What is the first song you remember having listened to in your life?

First two songs I can remember loving enough to tape record, and listen to over and over, were Steppin' Out by Joe Jackson, and The Look of Love by ABC.

I'm pretty sure it was "Beat It" by MJ.

― Gear! (Gear!), Monday, August 9, 2004 1:47 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

we didn't start the fire

also:

ditto on the electric company number song - 1,2,3,4,5..6,7,8,9,10..11,1------------2

― 6335, Monday, August 9, 2004 11:02 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
Oh my god, that song was funky as hell. I've always remembered that as some Sesame Street thing. No wonder no one ever knows what the fuck I'm talking about.

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Monday, August 9, 2004 11:20 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

electic company vs. sesame street is still an ongoing debate with me & my friends...i swear i've never seen a full episode of electric company in my life, but i totally remember that number song being a lynchpin of my middle childhood...

First pop song I really remember loving was "What a Feeling." It's still pretty awesome tbh.

"Ready for the 80s", Village People

"#9 Dream"

Baby Beluga by RAFFI.

I loved rocketships. "Afternoon Delight"

Elton John - Someone Saved My Life Tonight

when I first heard it, I called the classic rock station every day for a week to play it again so that I could get a tape.

The first I can remember was "Smooth Criminal". Might've been some Polish record my grandparents had and I can't remember though.

One of the first was "Tears Of A Clown," in terms of songs that I actually have memories of enjoying at a very early age.. according to my family I enjoyed other songs a lot way before this one.

Mickey - Toni Basil

spice world - spice girls

Tubeway Army, "Are 'Friends' Electric?"

According to my mother:

Somewhere over the rainbow

Earliest memory of getting obsessed over a pop song is probably ace of base or aqua or gin blossoms whichever came first... probably the beatles or elton john or paul simon previously since my dad had those. There was also a band called "onda vaselina" which were a bunch of kids who sang spanish covers of rock n roll and were very popular in the early 90s. I loved those but I havent listened in two decades they probably sucked.

probably not THE first but one of the first: "fox on the run" by sweet. i was 11 when it came out.

Also the mexican version of the "Now! Thats what I call music" compilations were early obsessions when I was 12. Particularly vol. 2 and 3

https://www.discogs.com/es/label/809389-Now-Thats-What-I-Call-Music!-Mexico

Ah forgot about Scatman. And the lion king soundtrack... I played those ones non stop for a year... I pity my parents but its their fault for not buying me headphones

thinking more about it, there must have been fave music before. probably something by abba. i remember liking "ring ring" from 1973.

and further back: i remember at primary school i listened to and loved "am tag als conny kramer starb" by juliane werding in 1972, a cover of "the night they drove old dixie down".

I had a solitary and completely random 7" single in my childhood record collection, for Amii Stewart's cover of 'Knock On Wood'. But it was the b-side, 'When You Are Beautiful', that I used to listen to obsessively. It's gorgeous and melancholy and still one of my all-time favorites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1VLJv5kq_Y

Ok the two first Onda Vaselina records are from 1991 and I was 6 at the time and I don't remember anything prior to that so those guys win:

https://www.discogs.com/es/La-Onda-Vaselina-La-Onda-Vaselina-2/master/500615

https://www.discogs.com/es/La-Onda-Vaselina-La-Onda-Vaselina/master/731981

Favorite songs I remember without listening to them again:
grandes luces de fuego (great balls of fire)
Doctor brujo (witch doctor)
Lagrimas de cocodrilo (crocodile rock)
El calendario (calendar girl)

Aside from kids' music, it was probably "Pick Up The Pieces" by Average White Band.

Do You Know The Way To San Jose, I think.

My dad listened to a lot of blues from the 30s-60s when I was a kid so I think it was Smokestack Lightning by Howlin' Wolf. Still rules.

Wow

This is true for me too:

I'm pretty sure it was "Beat It" by MJ.

possible contenders

'set the controls for the heart of the sun' (live)
'21st century schizoid man'
'the rainbow/eden/desire'
'one hundred years'

but the actual answer is probably nils lofgren - 'secrets in the street', i shit you not

shall we relive the magic together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_guOyN2wmkM

"ball of confusion" by the temptations

Imago, how old were you when you heard those King Crimson and Talk Talk songs??

about 7 or 8. my dad played me some cool shit in the car

still putting 'every little thing she does is magic' on pub jukeboxes to this day. eiyoooohh

"Stand and Deliver". Went to a fancy dress dressed as Adam Ant, I was around 6. Mr T won :(

Lol

still putting 'every little thing she does is magic' on pub jukeboxes to this day. eiyoooohh

― r|t|c, Thursday, December 15, 2016 3:02 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was on the same compilation as 'secrets in the street'. though we have diverged, yet we began at the same point

foul taste from birth! i'd have hated 'secrets in the street' even then

fuckin' children

lol

when I was about 5 or 6 I had a peculiar special dance cum ritual which I would perform to the ghostbusters theme before school, but thinking about it this is predated by my love of 'john kettley is a weatherman', in large part bc it was the first cultural reference I got aged ~3

What's a dance cum ritual? Self-correct error? I googled and it got me some weird drinking semen as part of male rites of passage articles and now I'm feeling disturbed.

well if we're going back that far then my favourite audio recording was probably a certain alphabet-learning cassette tape with a weird squelchy bubblegum-pop synth melody, sometimes wonder if it's even been uploaded to the internet

x fuckin post

I'm not sure the rites of passage mentioned in the article involve the ghostbusters theme but it should.

Probably one of these songs from mixtapes my mom occasionally made for holiday car trips
Elvis Presley - Return to Sender
Gary Brooker - No More Fear of Flying
David Bowie - Sound and Vision

xxp
as in a cross between the two. it revolved around putting a step I used for the toilet in the middle of the room and then doing a weird, I guess ghostly shimmy/wiggle over to it during the intro and then lots of hopping on and off it while spinning. semen wasn't a big part of my life at that age.

obv I enlisted my little brother to join in and make it more of an occasion

Hahaha sorry as you know english is not my first language... I knew that wasn't what you meant but it read like a disturbing cum funny 4chan post.

Did I use that one right?

(I think it's usually used with two nouns. From Apple's Oxford dictionary:

combined with; also used as (used to describe things with a dual nature or function): a study-cum-bedroom.

gloria estefan's cover of "turn the beat around"

xxp I enjoyed it. there are also a smattering of uk place names with cum in them - e.g. chorlton cum hardy

I'm very inmature and I didn't sleep well because learning about the -cum- use in language is making me giggle and is my new favorite thing.

lol

ah, funny how many people have said "Beat It" !
Same for me, I think (I suppose there were other songs I liked earlier but I don't remember them while "Beat It" was the first 7" I bought).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0fuVoSa3dc

also my first vinyl

"Party Man" by Prince. when i was a kid i used to dance all over the room to this like a lunatic.

"50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" - which I thought at age six featured the lyric "You don't have to be corduroy."

I would very often request that my parents pop in the cassette of XTC's English Settlement (we're American, but the band got a lot of college radio airplay in the US during the 80s) and fastforward to "Senses Working Overtime" -- surely one of the greatest hooks ever written, in terms of its child-singalong-ability

"Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks

Weird to think my first favorite was a Jacques Brel composition

"Weird Al" Yankovic - "Fat"

'frog chorus' (which i was also into) reminds me of my strong fondness for prefab sprout 'king of rock and roll'. the chorus will always be "i want cookie" and i'm afraid you cannot tell me otherwiseg

hate to say it but that was also a childhood fave. prefab sprout's greatest hits on one side of the c90, garbage's debut on the other

hahahaha are u srs

about the c90 i mean

srs. now u see how i was built

You guys had way cooler childhoods than mine.

Beach Boys - Kokomo

and

Billy Ray Cyrus - Achy Breaky Heart

weird that Van Dyke Parks played accordion on my first favorite song!

I had a keyboard that has pachebel's canon as a preset melody. That.

mine was either eurythmics' "sweet dreams are made of this" or madonna's "holiday"

Lovely Rita. While cutting out the mustache and ruining any possible resale value...

Spanish Flea, by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

Steely Dan's "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" is the first song I can recall giving me frisson

I was really into Buddy Holly at age 3-4. Probably "Think it Over" bc it's the one that still gives me vague nostalgic flashbacks to my toddler-era love of it when it comes on.

I'm sure I loved plenty of nursery rhymes and dimly recall a fondness for Frere Jacques and Row Your Boat but my first official favorite song on the radio has to have been Axel F.

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime. Saw it on MTV in the late 80s when I was like 6 years old and I became obsessed with them, hopelessly tried to find their music on the radio and MTV and they became a kind-of a grail to me. Wasn't until college I was finally able to buy their music.

The "on the radio" part is important because it permits that particular instrumental song from a movie without letting The Black Hole, Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back into the field

My first favorite band ended up being INXS so I kind of took a detour from that auspicious start

the chorus will always be "i want cookie" and i'm afraid you cannot tell me otherwise

Pffft, my little brother always sang it as "I'm a turkey" and even though at the time I was a much more worldly 8 years old to his 6 he grew up to be a fireman and I grew up to be a waster so I will defer to him.

That was on side 4 of the SMASH HITS PARTY 88 double cassette, but side 3 was where it was all at for me: "Beat Dis" I used to listen to on my headphones (cos I got my first walkman and that album for Christmas) in wonderment, my tiny mind adjusting to the concept of SAMPLING before anyone had explained it to me, or even given it a name. Also on side 3 was "Theme From S-Express" and I liked the way the train noise would pan from one headphone to the other, passing through MY BRAIN. Also on that side: "Push It", "Doctoring The House", "I Know You Got Soul", uh prolly a couple of others that escape me right now but are no doubt carved somewhere in my subconscious. Side 4 had Aztec Camera into Prefab Sprout, "Crash" by The Primitives somewhere on it then finished on "Letter From America". Never played the first tape much, I remember it started Bros then Kylie.

I'm sure I was definitely in about my parents records before then, but everything that comes to mind seems to be 88-89 when I actually look it up: Leonard Cohen, Roy Orbison, the Beautiful South, The Proclaimers, Fine Young Cannibals... I think I only started playing stuff over and over once I got my walkman and HEADPHONES, so (in terms of music I was myself actually choosing to listen to) any of that stuff, really.