My first musical memory was in 1997, in kindergarten; the teacher asked
"which music we liked", which is quite a strange question to ask 5 year old kids;
the one who sat next to me said: "just say you like the Backstreet Boys". So,
I said i liked the Backstreet Boys, though I really didn't know who they were at the time..
It's a cheesy memory :)

First one that really stands out would be Van Halen's Jump.

The song opens up with a very square-wave 80s synthesizer.  Towards the end, there's an instrumental bridge that features a wall-of-sound bit with a guitar/keyboard duet.  Then there's some guitar and the lyric "Might as well jump!"

Mom preferred the rock-and-roll/crooners of the 50s and 60s, Dad got his share of that but dabbled in a bit of psychedelic rock/jazz/wall-of-sound. 

Dad: (confused by those wimpy keyboards instead of manly guitars)
Mom: (sorta digs the keyboards but freaks at any electric guitar, "That's just noise!")
Dad: (silently digs the wall of sound effect as the guitar )
Song: "Might as well jump!"
Mom: "Why do they yell instead of sing?  And... And does he mean..." (regarding an oblique suicide reference)
Dad: "Hey, this kid's music ain't half bad..."

My parents eventually worked out that it was just a kid listening to new music and went back to their respective musical bubbles, but because it confused them both, I was convinced I must have been onto something good.  And that's the story of how I never developed an anti-synthesizer/anti-guitar prejudice, and grew up enjoying both new wave and heavy metal, and being mocked by wavers and metalhead purists alike. 

Years later when I was in college, I freaked them out with Skinny Puppy.  Maybe the next time I'm back home I'll lay some Skrillex on 'em, and remind them of the day they caught a kid with his finger hovering over the "record" button trying to tape some Van Halen from the radio.  (For future readers, think of that as analog streamripping...)

Hard to say for sure, because it's going so far back. My best guess is this from 1967

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5akEgsZSfhg&feature=kp

My memory is not what it used to be though. So this might not be totally accurate, but close. ;D

About 1988 or 1989, watching the Thriller music video, the whole thing, it seemed like a movie and was pretty terrifying for me at the time. ;D

That is a hard one. I do remember in first grade using Cuisenaire rods and made a building. I told everyone that it was Alice's Restaurant. And I even made the railroad tracks.

For those of you who don't know what Cuisenaire rods are:


http://s89343.gridserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/swiftriver-191.jpg



Cat

It was around the mid '90s, and I was at my grandma's house. I could hear R&B music being played in my aunt's bedroom (she was in her mid 20s at the time). I don't remember what songs were being played, but they were catchy.

I also remember being in preschool and sitting in the back seat of my mom's car. Some songs I remember hearing on her radio were Torn by Natalie Imbruglia, Don't Speak by No Doubt, and The Way by Fastball.

My mom also loved the song Give Me One Reason by Tracy Chapman.

"The Sign" by Ace of Base, but this could have been after its initial peak. I also remember hearing the songs "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and "We Will Rock You" a lot for some reason.

Someone above mentioned "Thriller". I too have a pretty vivid memory of seeing the music video on TV in somebody's basement during some kind of graduation party or something. I also thought it was some kind of horror movie and I was terrified. This was probably around 1994, obviously well over a decade after it was released.

1964.  I was 4 and in a nursery school in a lady's basement.  It was likely approaching 'graduation' time when some kids left for kindergarten.  Beatlemania was rampant then.  I distinctly remember my glee as a number of my fellow kids, including my brother, donned mops on their head and broom guitars, bounced on the daybed and sang at the top of their lungs "I Wanna Hold Your Hand Hand Hand..."  :D

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1984: I swear that this was the very first music video that I ever saw.  The drummer Chris Steffler, and guitar player Sergio Galli with some very attractive ladies in a white face and miming behind Mark makes for a really cheesy moment in music history.  I liked it even though I didn't really understand it at the time.  LOL! ;D I know that I wasn't thinking that it was silly at the time.
I just love that drum solo in this song no matter who's playing it.  ;)

I would say MC Hammer, since my brother and I constantly watched the first Addam's Family movie from 1991, which is full of his music, not to mention that my brother got a "2 Legit 2 Quit" video for Christmas, either in 1991 or '92. I also found out about Weird Al Yankovic around the same time, thanks to a neighbor who was 5 years older than I (I was born in 1987).

A little bit later, thanks to the same neighbor, I found out about Nirvana, causing me to erroneously comment, "Hey! He copied Weird Al!" when I heard "Smells like Teen Spirit" for the first time  ;D .

The first music video I remember seeing seems to have been Michael Jackson's "Black or White." I remember seeing it with my father, who was utterly impressed with the morphing effects at the end of the video.

All of this must have been circa 1992, with a few of them perhaps in late 1991.

"The Sign" by Ace of Base, but this could have been after its initial peak. I also remember hearing the songs "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and "We Will Rock You" a lot for some reason.

Someone above mentioned "Thriller". I too have a pretty vivid memory of seeing the music video on TV in somebody's basement during some kind of graduation party or something. I also thought it was some kind of horror movie and I was terrified. This was probably around 1994, obviously well over a decade after it was released.


I remember The Lion Sleeps Tonight! Around the time The Lion King was in theaters (or coming to video), I went to Burger King with my mom and heard this song playing.

A little bit later, thanks to the same neighbor, I found out about Nirvana, causing me to erroneously comment, "Hey! He copied Weird Al!" when I heard "Smells like Teen Spirit" for the first time  ;D .


I used Weird Al Yankovic as a gateway drug to get my mom to tolerate my nascent pop music interests.  It was Weird Al's In 3-D album that brought him from Dr. Demento's weekly radio obscurity to superstardom when "Eat It" came out in 1984.  The funniest one was "don't you think Michael Jackson's voice is a little high-pitched", as if anyone cared in the 80s.  Afterwards, any concerned questions about "that noise you're listening to" could be easily deflected into speculating about how Weird Al was going to be making fun of it. 

Whenever the topic of how today's music was just noise came up over dinner, Dad just smiled, reminded Mom about how my grandparents used to rant against "Elvis the Pelvis", and a couple of days later, there'd be a well-worn Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin album discreetly slipped into the bookshelf that held the family's albums, and somehow I knew exactly where to look, and to always use headphones when listening to it.

Very hard to say. When I hear music from 1990, I often think that I can relate to it in some way as I have some vague memories. But the first true memories are from around 1992 when I first heard a CD of Genesis (with older 80s tracks). The first band with recent songs I clearly remember was Ace of Base around 1993.

This is indeed a tough one, but I think my earliest memory of a pop song was when my parents took me and my brothers and sisters to a (long since closed) roller skating rink in Ashland, Nebraska and this song was playing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPcc1ftj8E

I must have been somewhere between 2 and 4 years old.

Probably something insufferably twee that my mother would have played around the house - I'm thinking along the lines of 'Knock Three Times' or something like that, but it's now so long ago!

Her brother however, had already amassed quite a formidable record collection, which I would (and did) sit and listen to for hours - on the proviso, of course, that I never touched his records! Fair enough! (Now, when he visits me, he's always going through my stuff!) It was through him that I had my first undiluted doses of Floyd, Quo, Deep Purple and The Eagles, which I think stood me in good stead!

But oddly - no Beatles! I had to really discover that by myself just as I crept into adolescence...

I was thinking about this for some time. Was it Paul Revere and The Raiders? Listening to 45's at a friends house.
Was it Sonny and Cher from their comedy hour? Was it Three Dog Night coming from my brothers room? Then I
remembered it was none of those. My uncle lived with us when he was discharged from the Navy and took up
occupancy in my brothers room. I spent many hours with him listening to this real weird music. It was sometimes
dark and spooky, and sometimes funny and upbeat but really, I mean really weird, especially for a seven year old.
I spent many a hour with my uncle listening to....The Doors.

Strange how I blocked this out until now.

My first pop music memory is listening to the song Conga by Miami Sound Machine on the radio circa 1990. And that was a long long time ago. :o I still like that song.  :)

My first musical memory was Hip-hop and R&B as my parents played it everyday. I remember the music they were playing and I was singing and dancing to it and this was in the mid/late 90s. I may not remember the song titles. but I still enjoyed them no matter what. 

Most certainly my parents' Beatles records.  "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Eleanor Rigby," "Hello Goodbye," "Lady Madonna," and so many more...
:)

My first real music memory is of singing songs at nursery school, but awareness of pop music was in 1963 with the groups of Freddie And The Dreamers, Gerry And The Pacemakers and The Beatles.

Thinking back to the earliest pop music I remember, it would be Boney M and The Bee Gees. That would've been the late 70s when I was 2 or 3 yrs old.

For me, it's a toss-up between The Beatles' "Let It Be" and Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4", when I would've been almost 4.