...when I heard this:

(The Shadows - Apache)

It was the most thrilling sound I'd ever heard.

Inky, I forgot that one. Good Shout.

Blackberry Way, good, but was old by then.

and I never thought my first attempt at embedding a video would be this. This is the first chart song I remember from the time.

thus began a lifelong obsession with electronic music

I seemed to only become really aware of music in our house when I was about 10 onward...

Rock with you - Michael Jackson. Off the Wall was played a lot in our house. I still think was his best album, and it started to go downhill from there.

Never let her slip away - Andrew Gold. I suppose, because as a kid, it was easy to sing along to.

and Chalte Chalte Yunhi Koi Mil Gaya Tha - Lata Mangeshkar
This, because my mum would play it constantly in the kitchen on an old battered green cassette-tape. It's still a very beautiful song.

Paint it black - Stones
Keep on running - Spencer Davis group
Shape of things - Yardbirds
Day Tripper - Beatles
Eleanor Rigby - Beatles
The Carnival is over - The New Seekers??

From the 70's
Strange kind of woman - Deep Purple
My brother Jake - Free
Paranoid- Black Sabbath
Silver Machine - Hawkwind
Schools out - Alice Cooper

..... Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn' for the first time - or rather saw and heard it as it was being shown on that famous ep of Tomorrow's World. It really felt as if these accountants had been sent from the future to show us How All Music Will Be in the Space Year Zwei Tausand! One day we will all have our names cursively rendered in blue neon! It truly sounded like nothing on else on earth (well, at least in my limited experience and based on all the other music that I was exposed to at the time) and I still think it has that quality, a bit like 'Tomorrow Never Knows' or A Guy Called Gerald's 'Voodoo Ray'. I'd started reading scifi at a very early age and was impatient for the future, and this terrific track truly felt like some kind of musical evolutionary throw-forward from tomorrow, which of course it was.

BR
FT

One hearing of "Life on Mars(?)" and I was gone, solid gone

As referred to on another post.

Possibly the first 'pop' song I was ever really aware of and rarely bettered since.

Older brother's new Santa-sourced tiny transistor radio was tuned to Luxembourg.

These Boots Are Made For Walking was played for the first time.

The "ding di-di ding di-di ding di-di ding di-di di-ing" descending guitar sequence was epiphanal.

Sounded so different from the stuff I liked at the time, especially Elkie's haunting, husky voice. Never noticed the lyrics at the time

when I was 8 or so

It was the drums in the chorus that did it for me. Sounded utterly cataclysmic to my young ears (actually a bit like Johnny Wakelin's In Zaire, which I also faintly remembered form childhood. I've been enjoying hearing it on the ToTP reruns). African before Adam Ant.

...it had to be The Owl and the Pussycat:
http://youtu.be/yz5NJI0m3eU

When I was 10, it had to be Jailhouse Rock.
http://youtu.be/gj0Rz-uP4Mk

Pretty obvious choice, but Bohemian Rhapsody really was an eye opener for this 9 year old when it came on TOTP. Cue much practising in the dark with a mirror and torch to try to recreate the video.

Another was the Kinks Lola. I'd heard it quite often but the day that I really listened to the lyrics and the penny dropped...well, let's just say I was shocked - and surprised that you could put that in a song !

not their worst either.

Roll away The Sone: Mott The Hoople

Maybe not blown away but I definitely wanted to own it. I was 8 or nine at the time.

would take me up to 1980. From my parents' collection of 45s there was:

Kinks - Waterloo Sunset
Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
Smokey Robinson - Tears of a Clown
The Supremes - Reflections
Henry Mancini - Moon River
The Moody Blues - Go Now
Mamas and The Papas - Monday Monday
Stones - Paint it Black
Beatles - Strawberry Fields
Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer

And from the 45s I bought or begged to have bought for me:

Sparks - This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both of Us
Stevie Wonder - Superstition
Bowie - Sound and Vision
The Ruts - Babylon's Burning
M - Pop Music
Clash - White Man In Hammersmith Palais
Gerry Rafferty (apparently...)- Baker Street
Paul McCartney - Coming Up
Donna Summer - I Feel Love
The Police - Message In A Bottle

and this:

(Squeeze - Take Me I'm Yours. This still sounds an incredible single, the arrangement still blows me away. It's psychedelic, it's pop, it's rock, it's new wave, it's krautrock, it's just bizarre and brilliant)

I'm a rock fan but I loved this. The production was excellent and it's such a great song. I also loved 'Superstition' by Stevie Wonder.

for me was Thriller. The song, the album and the video.
I still remember the family settling down to watch it when it was shown on TV for the first time.
Started an obsession that lasted about seven years.

The combination of Arthur and Vincent Crane's Hammond was a potent mix. Me and the kids across the road formed a club based on our appreciation of The God of Hell Fire

was Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group.
The version that is always played these days has female backing vocals but I'm sure there was an original version without them that sounded much better.
Strangely, from that era , I also have great affection for "It Might As Well Rain Until September" a pre-Tapestry single by Carole King.

I was weaned on 80s "NOW!" compilations, so I remember being thrilled by, among others:

Take On Me - A-Ha
Push It - Salt 'n' Pepa
Mary's Prayer - Danny Wilson
Can I Play With Madness? - Iron Maiden
Heaven Is A Place On Earth - Belinda Carlisle
Don't Call Me Baby - Voice Of The Beehive

Those all came out between the ages of 7 and 10 and all thrilled me deeply, to the point of obsessive repeated listening. Later, the important ones were:

Paradise City - Guns 'n' Roses
Just Like Heaven - The Cure
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Animal Nitrate - Suede

And you know what? I still stand by every single song on that list.

I loved their cover of I Think I Love You.

'Do It Again', by The Beach Boys. I first heard it when I was about 10 or 11 in 1975 or so. That 12 bar throb and the bendy harmonies knocked me out.

'Caroline' by Quo. Again, a 12 bar. Possibly the most pristine version of such. Elemental. Pulled you onto your feet and made your heart beat.

'All You Need is Love' by The Beatles I can just remember from around the time of it's original hey day. I was very very small and can recall it playing in our old house, the house we moved out of when I was 5. Even now hearing the first few bars of the Marseillaise intro makes me feel very odd and deja vu-ish.

'Jimmy Jimmy' by The Undertones. Such a guitar hook.

I think I was on my summer holidays from school in 76. This made me take the bus to Norwich the next day to buy the Live at the Marquee EP. I loved it and still do.