The First Song That You Remember

Hi All, I thought that it would be cool to start a thread to discuss and/or to state the very first song that you heard, regardless of your age at the time of first hearing it or it's genre, the first song that is still with you today perhaps in some strange way, did it influence you ? and how ? I will start the ball rolling, my first song that I remember that really captivated me and still does is "Those were the days " sung by Mary Hopkin, and produced by Paul McCartney, I was 7 years old, I sang that song to death as a kid and it still travels with me, don't have a copy of it though, funny that, prior to that, about a year earlier, I remember a couple of my siblings and a couple of friends plus myself were playing together in the sun room with the radio on in the background and it was playing The Beatles " I am the Walrus " and I remember that we all stopped playing towards the end of the song, listened to the rest of it and we began rolling around the floor in fits of laughter, had no idea of The Beatles at such an age, but still, very witty and funny all the same, both of those situations were experienced at the time of original release per the songs, how about you ? what is your first song that got you ? let's hear it !

 

Yellow Submarine heard it as a baby in 2000 or something because my mom got herself the then-new "Yellow Submarine Songtrack" (she even had the movie on VHS, IIRC). The CD is still with us, the tape sadly not.

 

T.Rex - Hot Love (for me, June-ish 1971)

My uncle bought me a radio/headlight/indicator 'thing' that attached to the handlebars of my first bicycle and I remember Hot Love being on air nearly every day as I cycled around the block of maisonettes we lived in at the time. The other song I distinctly remember was Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep but I won't go into that...

 

Various songs off of these two:




That my dad had recorded onto cassette to play in the car. Must have been 3 or 4 years old. Another McCartney one was the CHOBA album.

But I was video-taped at 10 months old leaning on a table and moving in rhythm to Queen's Another One Bites the Dust... Though I don't recall that moment. Couldn't walk at the time but could boogie down.

 

"Slide" by the Goo Goo Dolls. Hearing it throughout my childhood, I thought it was awesome. Hearing it now, it is the most blatant rip-off (of "Asking Me Lies") that I have ever heard in my life. Never mind "Fight Test"/"Father And Son" or "Hello I Love You"/"All Day And All Of The Night" or even Vanilla Ice's abortion. You may as well copy the Bible word-for-word and claim that you wrote it and that every idea and event that occurs sprung from your imagination. If the Goo Goo Mucks can make money off of "Slide" I can probably just steal an old lady's walker and claim that it was mine to begin with and get away with it.

A few others I remember: "O-Bla-Di, O-Bla-Da", "Yellow Submarine", "The Globe" by Big Audio Dynamite, and a non-country cover of Merle Haggard's "I'm A Lonesome Fugitive" which I have never been able to find again. I only remember this because I was five years old and in the middle of a long car ride and my mother asked if I wanted to hear "the Rolling Stones". "Yeah, I like that song". I don't remember what song came on, I think "Brown Sugar", but five-year-old me didn't dig it and demanded that the disc be ejected! I never did hear the cover in question again and my mother doesn't recognize the lyrics or melody from Merle's version. I guess I was always insane. (And that might explain why I've never cared for "Brown Sugar"!)

 

Hmm, maybe The Girl With The Golden Braids by Perry Como. I think I was 4.

 

I was younger than five (since I moved to a different town from her at that age), but I remember sitting with my (much older) cousin as she played some Elvis [I can't remember the specific song(s)].

 

Either "Happy Birthday to You" or "Jingle Bells."

More vividly, I remember that my kindergarten teacher (fall of 1966) started every morning by playing an instrumental version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" off a record. Only when I became a first-grader the next year did I learn that the record skipped, because it was then that I learned the words, and they didn't fit the melody I heard 180 school days in a row.

As far as pop songs go, I still distinctly remember "Sugar Town" by Nancy Sinatra playing on my mom's car radio, and all of us kids singing along. It was no later than 1967. To this day, that song brings back that pleasant memory.

 

Beatles- I Feel Fine, 1964

 

Eric Burdon & War - Spill The Wine. Heard on the radio circa 1971

 

"Snoopy vs. The Red Baron" on the car radio. I was 6 or 7. lol

 

'Taxman' by The Beatles. As a kid in the mid 60s that count-in and intro had a big impact on me.

 

Let’ Stick Together - Bryan Ferry

I was about 4 years old when it released, it was a highly successful song in Australia, so it was on the radio everyday, and whenever it came on I would race to the radio, turn it up and just sit in front waiting for the female part.
I still love the song and hear it regularly, but I’ve never done any research to find out who performed that part.

 

Dionne Warwick's version of What the World Needs Now is Love.

I remember as a toddler this song played repeatedly between programs on TV accompanied by some kind of video or montage.

 

Little Star by the Elegants...my mom was an Arthur Murray dance instructor, and she had tons of records. I had my own record player when I was 3 years old.

 

My parents gave me a bunch of their old 45's when I got my first record player - I was 5/6 years old maybe. One of those plastic toy record players with built in speaker. In amongst the bunch I recall hearing Rolling Stones version of Chuck Berry's Around and Around.....captivated. Everything else got pushed aside.

 

I don't know which was the very first, but among them are:

Sherry and Big Girls Don't Cry by The Four Seasons

Fireball (the theme to Fireball XL-5)

and Runaway by Del Shannon, which I heard like at 2am on storming night on a jukebox in a diner in southern California coastal town in my pajamas eating a bowl of onion soup. I was 4. Long story.

 

The first one I can remember that I can pinpoint to a specific time is Pleasant Valley Sunday, Christmas 1967. We were trimming the tree and my sister was playing the song. I was a few months shy of 4 years old. I also remember hearing Eleanor Rigby and Turn, Turn, Turn at a very young age.

 

When I was very young, my parents had the Decca Hundred Best Tunes LPs, and the most played record was The Top Ten.
Sibelius' Finlandia was on it, and, having been made familiar with it and being told what it was, my two year-old self would say, "Play Si-bay-lee-us..."
The Decca Favourite Composers series was also in the house, and so Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (narrated by Ralph Richardson) would have been very early too.

 

Stand & Deliver by Adam & The Ants, I would've been 3 I think.

 

First song I remember hearing is "Miss You" by The Rolling Stones, playing in the car radio when I was about two. It was a brand new song then...

 

“Frere Jacques” from my wind-up Smoopy doll

 

^Snoopy

 

"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"...my dad played it on the jukebox at a Pizza Hut. I'm guessing this was the summer it was a hit, which means I was 3. What I do recall for sure is that I was terrified of boats for quite some time afterward.

 

Le Tic-Toc Choc ou Les Maillotins (François Couperin) - harpsichord piece on a 78 rpm gramophone record at my granddad's in 1955 or thereabouts.