Is there a consensus on the first recognizably "garage punk" single? Or even "the first one to go top 40 such that it could have influenced others nationwide"?
I am finding this pro-BTR arg really weird. I mean, the obvious ENTIRE POINT of the recording is to remind you of its precedents! It is possibly one of the MOST precedented major rock songs. This doesn't mean it isn't a fine record with SOME distinctions from the Spector it is very deliberately trying to evoke.
I think "Message in a Bottle" and "Walking on the Moon" for instance, sounded so different from the music I was hearing at the time. There was so much "silence" around the notes played by the guitar, bass and drums that they seemed to float in space.
The opening riff sounds is probably more conventional but everything that comes afterwards is unique.
The point of the OP, I think, is to find songs that "seem to come out of nowhere", even if they don't. "I Feel Love" is a great example. It sounds pretty different from what came before, even if it drew inspiration from lots of sources. Same for "I Am the Walrus" and many other great examples that have been offered here.
I think both "Satisfaction" by the Stones and "My Generation" by The Who were pretty unique at the time, both in their sound as well as subject matter. The tone of Richards' fuzz guitar in "Satisfaction" is actually quite unique (I don't think I ever heard it again, even in other Rolling Stones' songs) and stand outs very much against the backdrop of the acoutics guitars and tambourine/drum accompaniment. The subject matter of the lyrics is also a bit ahead of its time, I think. "My Generation" doesn't even sound like a real song, the first time you hear it. Kind of proto punk, I guess.
while obviously My Gen doesn't "sound just like" Louie Louie, it's charting in May 64 in that snarly distorted garage punk vein makes it a precedent, as of course would You Really Got Me. Again, not that My Gen didn't take garage punk to a higher level of aggro insanity, and it does I think meet the "who told the Who a pop single COULD SOUND LIKE THAT??" consideration I wonder about a lot of 64-68 pop singles. Even, in a mellower vein, Byrds Tambourine Man or Turn Turn
I first heard this on oldies radio in the last decade and it sounded kind of unprecedented to me even then (and even knowing the song via Scott Walker version).
This one definitely was some sort of precedent. Whether Queen was influenced by it, I can't say -- but it came out eight months before A Night at the Opera.
I was going to say "Purple Haze". First time I heard that on the radio it sounded like something from another planet. Also "Tomorrow Never Knows". Nothing sounded like that before.
the garage punk thing seems important because while we know of course blah de blah ed sullivan beatles blew the minds of a million young bands in garages----most of the "garage rock" stuff that either did hit the charts or was only discovered by people my age ina gajillion reissue label comps, does NOT sound like people trying to emulate the Beatles per se. Sound way more like they are trying to emulate the Kingsmen or the first two Kinks singles.
The original (1966) version of Heroes and Villains by The Beach Boys applied that episodic approach to a short form pop song. Wilson later gave the song a slightly more conventional form when he added choruses nicked from Do You Like Worms, but it was still pretty dizzying and freewheeling for a pop single. I tend to think Pete Townsend was influenced by H&V when he wrote A Quick One. I know he was a Smiley Smile fan.