Blue - Eiffel 65. I was ~6 when I discovered it. My poor mother had to listen to that on repeat. I ended up growing up with severe depression. I guess I really am blue.
Don't feel too bad. I'm certain that at least 100 million mothers had to hear that song on repeat, from across the world. It was HUGE amongst the kids at my school in the US.
That whole album was and is definitely worth the listen. It may begin and end with Blue, but there is quite a range of emotions and messages. When I was young, Blue was my favorite, but as I grew up, different songs started to resonate with me.
we should think about,
what we got right now,
cause the good things are made up of time.
smile to your problems,
leave the past behind.
never forget this.
find the truth in your soul,
keeping you alive.
going on from minute to minute.
don't shade the future,
with all that's behind.
live for today.
[...]
don't shade your future,
with what you don't have.
keep your mind on what's here today.
now and forever,
build the future now.
keep this mind.
though you will take your time,
to get what you need,
but you'll do it step after step.
yet to come is all that's gone,
learn to live this moment.
live for today.
[...]
the past is all that's gone (the past is all that's gone)
the future is yet to come. (and the future's yet to come)
this moment is all our own. (you know it is)
we should live this way,
just building up our day,
now is forever.
the past is all that's gone, (the past is all that's gone)
the future is yet to come. (the future is yet to come)
this moment is all our own.
we should live this way,
just building up our day,
now is forever.
I hope the spoiler tags work properly for everyone. Otherwise, sorry for the long comment.
I had the California Raisins stop motion movie and watched it on repeat. Loved their versions of Heard it Through the Grapevine and Signed Sealed Delivered
This is letting my inner basic bitch out, but Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls. Still have a soft spot for that song to this day, right alongside Semisonic's Closing Time.
Are the Goo Goo Dolls considered basic? They certainly got mainstream hype in their heyday, but I don't think that makes them basic. Iris was one of my first favorite songs as well (I was about 9 years old when I heard the song playing at a Hudson Belk thay my mom and I were shopping at).
I've seen them 3 times live in concert and they're great.
I more meant the song in particular, but I recall it being pretty much everywhere, for a time. It's a damn good song, but I feel like there's a decent slice of us that, even if it wasn't the first favorite for everyone, it was an early influence due to sheer frequency.
For me, it was The One I Love by R.E.M. from when I was about four or five.
Besides being a banger of a song, I think part of the appeal to my younger self was how easy the lyrics were to understand and memorize, which I still have memorized. They were my first favorite band too.
I was really young when it came out so I don't have specific memories of listening to it but a few years later I heard it and it triggered something in my subconscious. "Oh yeah, I think this song is my favorite!"
It kinda depends on how I think of what a favorite song is.
The earliest possible song was "we will rock you", but that was before I can remember. It was what my mom used as a bedtime song. No bullshit, she'd put the 45 on, and just keep replaying it by resetting the needle until I dropped off. No matter how fussy I was, that worked.
And I've always loved that song. As I got older, she'd also play are are the champions after, but again, that was before I can remember. But it was a song I'd beg her to play frequently, and I do have memories of that from before kindergarten.
But is that really a favorite? It isn't a song I heard and chose, it doesn't really count as my favorite any more than a lullaby would.
The first song I can remember latching onto because I just really loved it was Mountain Music, by Alabama. That album was the second one that was officially mine. I bought a Joan Jett album with my own money as my first album, and my dad got me the Mountain Music album the same day as a reward for something or other (he and I have different memories of what that was lol).
So, it would probably be Mountain Music, though it is really hard to pick through memory and be certain it as the first. Damn near fifty years old, so the first five or six years get hazy, and I had a head injury when I was about 12 that kinda fucked things up.
It might have been the Joan Jett song "I hate myself for loving you", or maybe something off of the album I bought, "glorious results of a misspent youth". Could have been one of her previous songs, with I love rock n roll or "do ya wanna touch" being the likely contenders there.
But I remember how much I loved the specific song Mountain Music clearly, so that's what I have come to think of as my first favorite.
If you use other standards, it might be later songs, but it is what it is lol.
Good Vibrations or Here Comes the Sun, my parents would let me use their walkmans (walkmen?) when I would play Commander Keen and Jill of the Jungle. It was a blast
Made all the more favorite by the fact that I listened to it in the living room, on cassette tape, and my grandmother marched over, took it out, and chastised me for listening to such filth.
Then broke hte tape with her big wooden spoon that she had on the wall.
I like big spoons and I cannot lie
Other grandmothers can’t deny
That when the kid comes in with a tape full of sin
It gets *crushed*, want to grind up dust
Cause you heard that the MC cussed
On the wall that the spoon is sharin’
With the room where the speakers was blarin’
Oh darling, can’t let you hear that
Can’t even let you near that
My bridge club tried to warn me
But that tape you got made me so onery
Oh little munchkin
Do you wanna play connect four once again?
Well lookie, here lookie
Does my dearie want another cookie?
I’ve seen you napping
To hell with that rapping
This house is neat, sweet
So shoes off and then wipe your feet
I’m tired of MTV
Saying hip hop is for Gs
Take the average Gran-Gran and ask her that
Do the little ones need that rap?
So Hilda (hello!), Matilda (hello!)
Have grandsons found that smut? (Heavens no!)
Tell them to sit down, put milk in a cup
I think Grandma’s still got those buttercups
“Mixtape” got whacked! (Heavy spoon and a plastic shell case)
“Mixtape” got whacked! (Heavy spoon and a plastic shell case)
…
Unfortunately Im out of time and have to go meet a friend.
I’d like to save this and finish it later but I’m too sleep deprived to remember.
Move it on Over - George Thorogood and the Destroyers
Grew up on his music because my dad controlled the car radio, as a little 4-5 year old I even had a whole dance to it not knowing what the song was actually about, hahaha
Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics. My mom had the radio on in the car always, and I remember this song being played all the time when it came out. Heavily influenced my musical tastes.
It was the first time I actively listened to a sad song, and while I was only 4 or so, and couldn't really understand what the lyrics were about, I remember the emotion feeling so powerful. The radio station that played it went off air when I was 5, and I cried about it a lot. To this day I gravitate toward sad songs; there's just something about minor chords that I can't get enough of.
I think I've always been drawn to good human vocals.
I remember using crappy earbuds and shedding a tear to Earth Song by Michael Jackson when I was a teenager. It's not my favourite song now, and I don't think I've ever cried to song after that, but music with good vocals can still definitely give me goose bumps. Anytime I listen to Jacob Collier's Moon River, or any video of his that has him conducting the entire concert audience to sing harmonically always give me the chills.
Walking on the Sun by Smash Mouth. I had a radio recording on a cassette tape until my uncle bought me the CD of the album Fush Yu Mang. I was only allowed to listen to that track off of it because my mom deemed the rest of it to not be appropriate. (As an adult, the other tracks were indeed totally inappropriate for a preteen)
Eleanor rigby when I was about 8. I then started liking last kiss(the Pearl Jam cover, though I do like the original as well) the next year, then under pressure from about 13-15, since then it’s been 500 miles by Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Circa 1983 on my first plane ride alone, aged about 10, from CA to GA, headphones plugged into the armrest with the ashtray inside: 'The Tide Is High' by Blondie was the first 'grown-up' song I recall that grabbed me.
I got really lucky. The first adult song that ever grabbed to me was Kansas's Carry On My wayward son.
I had never heard it before and on a family road trip to Florida I got to buy a cassette and I saw the art and I thought it looked good so I bought it and popped it into my little cassette player and I'm just writing down the road bored as hell my brother and sister picking on me.
All of a sudden "Carry on my wayward son" came on and my little preteen mind was completely blown.
True story: there's this song called No Rompas Más that every mexican will square dance to, and I too in fact grew up square dancing to.
When I got older I moved to Canada, never liked country music, and just went on about my life without it. Then we went back for a wedding and I brought my very Saskatchewan partner with me, and this fucking song comes on at the wedding so obviously we all get up and do our square dance moves imbedded in our blood, and after the song finishes, this fucking guy, this fucking guy is like "you know this is achy breaky heart right" and man, I am still furious my family tricked me like that for so long. That song slaps tho, I'll still admit it.
I mean, it's sung by Knight Rider, what's not to like? I was listening to that record all the time. But Looking for Freedom is the only song I remember. I probably never listened to anything else on there.
It was almost certainly "Cuddles the Calico Kitten" by Doris Hall. I listened to that tape every night as I fell asleep, until I was old enough to read myself to sleep. I would return to it whenever I was sick in bed, and still sing it at least once a month (often enough that my wife now also knows all the words).
This is a weird one. It's a song called Please pass the biscuits. I couldn't even hum the melody for it, it's been so long since I heard it.
Before I was old enough to go to school, (early 80s) my brother would play our parents records, and my dad had a 45 of this biscuit song. The song is the story of this kid who really loves biscuits. His family makes biscuits every Sunday and he's looking forward to it, but nobody hears him when he asks for the biscuits, and he doesn't get any.
I thought it was a pretty funny song, so I played it often.
I don't think I've heard this song before. But I'd be willing to bet that this became your favorite soon after you learned as a kid that you could make that unusual fan voice.
Used to have a little toy guitar and would strum it while wearing oversized sunglasses with my favorite cousin while the song was blaring. Adults loved it
I liked rock sort of "meh" when I was a kid, being born in 1964 a lot of it was old hippie stuff that never clicked with me like Zeppelin.
Then one day I was playing D&D at a friend's house and he played Mongoloid by DEVO. Holy shit I lost my mind. There was music out there that actually spoke to me!
Aliens Exist by Blink 182. I don't even know why because I didn't speak english or understand it at the time, I just remember my pure love for it. It's still one of my favourite songs and enema of the state of my favourite albums of all time.
Take On Me by A-Ha, when I was four I use to beg my mom to give my change for the jukebox every time we went to the local cafe, then proceed to dance about to it, week after week.
My mom used to run the local café. From time to time customers gave me a coin for the Juke Box. I couldn't read yet but B5 was Roy Orbison - You got it. Loved it.
I can only barely remember it having a saxophone part and even back when I would have said it was my favorite song, I didn't know it's name or artists. My mom used to leave a radio on when she put me to bed as a kid and there was a kinda slow jazz love song that would come on sometimes and I loved it. But that's all I remember.
For all I know, it was Careless Whisper. I'm sure it was something from the 80's considering this was in the last half of the 80's.
Our lady peace - Superman's dead, or collective soul - where the river flows, or weird als Amish paradise, or finally, whigfield - Saturday night. I'm not sure. I'm old now.
As someone who was inspired to ask this question after sitting in a coffee shop that was playing the Radio Disney songs of my youth there is no judgement here
Some Within Temptation song since my mom used to listen to them a lot. I still like metal/rock music but I'm more drawn to Vocaloid now. (which doesn't have songs of one specific genre so my playlist can get pretty messy sometimes)