Normally there's quite a good discussion on here about music and your favourite acts etc. so I thought I'd pose a question.

When I was a wee lad my parents brought me up on a lot of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Queen, George Michael, James Blunt (don't ask) but then obviously as you get older you discover new exciting music that you'd never heard before.

I'm wondering what was the ONE song you heard that completely changed the way you looked at music or sent your music taste in a completely different trajectory? Mine personally is R.E.M- The Great Beyond. I was about 9 when I saw it on Top of the Pops for the first time and it just totally changed my taste overnight and turned me away from classic rock to more indie rock and alternative music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_JnCWT-_O8" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I've had a few epiphanies in the musical sense.

Here are 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhKACztrqZc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl9ZkYViEIs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4RVRkurm4Y" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

and more recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iAYhQsQhSY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Paranoid Android by Radiohead sounded like it came from another planet when I was 14.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHiGbolFFGw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

With me it was not so much the song than the artist/band, and it still happens. My first love was The Shadows (I was very young but loved music even then) because they did so much more than what was happening at the time. Then there was The Who and The Kinks. Along came the late 60's and with that came Psychedelia and music just took a different turn and that transformed into bands like Yes and Genesis, ELP and the whole prog rock scene (my favourite era still). And it has gone on from there through the eighties and nineties (the aforementioned REM were immense) and even today (I can still remember the first time I heard Linkin Park, who we missed at Manchester after the bomb, having got tickets for the first time, sadly Chester is now dead).

Needless to say music has always been a great love of mine and always will be, and hopefully people will still come along when I'm eighty (if I get there) and make me go 'Yes!!! That is just awesome'.

Gold - Bondax (Gold EP)
Kong - Bonobo (Black Sands)
Hold On - SBTRKT Feat Sampha (SBTRKT)
Retrograde - James Blake (Overgrown)

Stand out songs from albums that changed my life.

Ravel's Bolero

Listened to it time and time again as a kid in the 60's trying to work out which instrument was introduced each time.

Ruined by Torvill & Dean.... made it so mainstream.

OK, not a song....

In my formative years 8-11, we didn't have a TV (my Dad was in the army and we lived in Germany at the time and none of my family spoke German so didn't seem much point).

Anyway, we had an old radiogram and I grew up listening daily to vinyl LPs of the likes of Dean Martin, Jim Reeves, Sinatra, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones etc.

Returned to England early 70's just as the glam rock era was beginning.

I still have a soft spot for the 'crooners' but the first time I saw/heard T Rex and Slade on TOTP I was blown away and knew there was more to life than 'Distant Drums' and 'Delilah'

The Beatles..please please me. The change from solo singers to bands.
Black Sabbath..paranoid. Got me into heavier rock music.
Bruce..born to run. Got me into story songs. More lyric than music based.

When I was a child, I couldn't do anything when Dionne Warwick came on the radio singing 'Walk On By'. I'd stand and listen until she'd finished.
Len Barry 1-2-3, had the same effect. Obviously born to be a soul boy.
When old enough it was the Motown compilation albums, volume 1,2 etc. Loved it.


And then I found Wigan.....heaven.

Kraftwerk - Autobahn - Got me into early electronic music
Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone - Got me into Dylan
Led Zep - Stairway - Got me into bands
Pink Floyd - Sheep - Got me into prog
Air - Kelly Watch The Stars - Got me into not dance electronic music
Underworld - Jumbo - Got me into beat electronics
Jethro Tull - The Whistler - Got me into walking through the woods pretending you're an elf music
Kate Bush - Running Up The Hill - Got me into Kate Bush
Guns n Roses - Welcome To The Jungle - Got me into new rock as opposed to classic rock
Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock - Got me into grunge
Men at Work - Down Under - Got me into music as its the first song I can remember loving
Dire Straits - Money For Nothing - Got me into the euphoria of music, the first thirty seconds or so overwhelmed me as an 8 year old

In my preadolescent years my favourite music genre as a whole was Tamla Motown and most things Soul.
Also enjoyed listening to other 60's & early 70's stuff such as Marc Bolan,Small Faces,Beatles...but nothing that really kicked ass.

Come 1977 things were about to change.
I Implemented what I had heard about the 'Birds & Bees' which coincided with a musical explosion.

https://youtu.be/qbmWs6Jf5dc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://youtu.be/J_h8MtU5Xyc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://youtu.be/CYH5xh6gd0c" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://youtu.be/nXqq4IBGdEo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I was never the same person after hearing this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uukM5A8GwKE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

bartons baggage wrote:I was never the same person after hearing this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uukM5A8GwKE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Should have titled the song "I'm Off My Tree"

Bottles and hammers
Carving knives and spanners..........

It changed the way I watched footy.

White Man in Hammersmith Palais

Early Teens would be Go Now - Moody Blues

Later would be Born to Run - Bruce and The King Will Come from Argus by Wishbone Ash

I'm 64 and grew up with The Beatles, Searchers etc.. I looked only at the television music programmes like Ready Steady Go, Thank your Lucky Stars and Top of the Pops. When I got a radio it was Radio 1 (I couldn't seem to get Luxemburg that well). It was chart music only really. Then two things happened - I went to work, earned money and bought a record player, so I could play what I wanted. And secondly I heard two songs that got me into music properly.

Firstly Matthews Southern Comfort got to number one in November 1970 with Woodstock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIHfuihoz70" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I loved the harmonies and pedal steel guitar. This needed investigating! I've followed Matthews music career ever since in all its directions. As he often covered other people's songs I checked those artists out too. That's been the main road of my musical journey.

The other road came about when I listened to Pick of the Pops on radio with Alan 'Fluff' Freeman. This was a two hour programme, the second being the singles charts, but the first was stuff outside the charts and anything Freeman fancied. One day he played Mockingbird by Barclay James Harvest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGvyG3SOMQg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This was completely different to anything I'd heard. Freeman played this about four weeks on the trot but of course it never got into the charts. It made me realise that there was more to music then stuff in the charts and I had to look harder to find what was to my taste.

Here I am nearly fifty years later and I seem to be regressing. I heard 'No Milk Today by Hermans Hermits and thought it sounded pretty good - nice harmonies. Unfortunately it is rather short on lyrics and musical ideas but it's a good effort!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdw4Ed2sR9c" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Oh well - a wasted fifty years!

34 years I don't give a f***
We're Burnley FC and we're going up...

More a year for me and that was 1967. White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane and Groovin by The Young Rascals. Totally different genres but a year that provided so much quality.

The Smiths - I started something!
Changed everything for me as a teenager and the way I looked at the world !

Humanoid - Stakker humanoid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK2U5ziV_Z8

shaped everything for me

Nirvana, smells like teen spirit!!

John Shuttleworth, smells like white spirit!!

The River (single) when it was first released. Recommended by a girl friend at the time and I listened rather reluctantly and then ........suddenly I found I could see!!!

I was 9 years old in 1956 and my mum and dad took me to the local Odeon to see "The Girl Can't Help it". Halfway through the film this black guy with huge quiff and an electric blue suit stands at the piano and hollers " ready set, go man go, I've gotta girl that I love so, I'm ready ready ready steady, I'm ready ready steady to rock n' roll"
Music has played a huge part in my life for the last 61 years and I hope it will continue.

I recall a day several years ago when seemingly everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
Girlfriend left me, gas cooker exploded, dog caught its plums in a long forgotten mouse trap, and I was made redundant.
As I sat, head in hands pondering the futility of my life, I heard Joe Dolce singing "Shaddup You Face"
Truly turned my life around.

Hearing "Australians in Europe" on the John Peel show.

The moment when I got The Fall.

Bob Dylan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G58XWF6B3AA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sam Cooke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEBlaMOmKV4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

KLClaret wrote:White Man in Hammersmith Palais

Was just observing this post but couldn’t let this pass. Just been down to Rubber Soul Records in Hanley today and invested 70 notes on Clash rarities. That 1st LP changed everything for me. The only band that mattered.

Five Years by David Bowie played repeatedly at my mate’s house in Colne by his older sister. Still the most mind-blowing of opening tracks to an album.
Hearing God Save The Queen (banned on Radio 1) and thinking WOW !!
When a friend lent me the Born to Run album at Uni in 1980 and from the first sound of harmonica on Thunder Rosd to the epic closing refrain of Jungleland I was completely transported.
Dancing , ******, like Morrissey at a wedding reception to Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now in the early 80s.
Then a decade later , after the largely drek 80s hearing Smells Like Teen Spirit and playing Nevermind on repeat for weeks.
Hearing Liam Gallagher’s sneer on Supersonic.
And Radiohead’s shimmering guitars on Lucky.
All defining moments for me.

Wile E Coyote wrote:I recall a day several years ago when seemingly everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
Girlfriend left me, gas cooker exploded, dog caught its plums in a long forgotten mouse trap, and I was made redundant.
As I sat, head in hands pondering the futility of my life, I heard Joe Dolce singing "Shaddup You Face"
Truly turned my life around.

That was number 1 in the charts the day I was born. I nearly had imagine by John Lennon

`Enjoy the Silence` by Depeche Mode. The first time I really felt music in the bones and it really talked to my feelings.

[quote="4:20"]

Jethro Tull - The Whistler - Got me into walking through the woods pretending you're an elf music
]

I wouldn't say there was one song, but several groups have changed my direction with music.

Shadows - first group I liked, and first I saw live.

Alarm (probably going out in a blaze of glory, or Newtown jericho) - go me wanting to play music.

Levellers (especially levelling the land album) - brought together music with my own political/social views and set me on a path of folk music.

Katzenjammer - seeing them live rekindled a desire to play again, showing that you can have fun, energy and be talented.

aclaretinstevenage wrote:Early Teens would be Go Now - Moody Blues

Later would be Born to Run - Bruce and The King Will Come from Argus by Wishbone Ash

Good choices. I'm a massive Moodies fan even after all these years - saw 'em live in the 70's. Not so much from the Go Now era though.
And still play Argus in the car (just the other day I fact), the guitar duet ending on Throw Down the Sword still makes the hairs stand up.

1971...Queen of Fools by Barbara Mills. I had listened to Motown and Atlantic/Stax for 3 or 4 years, but at my first northern soul event I heard this and was lost forever at 16.