Let's see...
Earliest musical memories are easy enough: Brahms Symphony No. 2 (Boston Symphony, Leinsdorf).
Here's the exact recording on YouTube, if you really are that interested. After that, it gets difficult to keep short. I'll try.
In late elementary and early middle school, it was mostly folk, but
Johnny Rivers' Slow Dancin' expressed my first notions of the opposite sex. My classical music preferences remained solidly in the romantics (also?), from mid-Beethoven through early Mahler, and Mahler's 1st Symphony became (and still is) my all-time favorite work.
Here's the last movement of the recording I knew most about. (This version is not considered one of the best by the cognoscenti, but what do they know?)
In high school, my classical tastes began to widen into the post-romantics, but remained mostly tonal: late Mahler, Wagner, Copland, Stravinsky.
The Firebird remains one of my favorites from this era. My popular musical tastes blew up, too, and I made my first-ever mix tapes, which I have since re-created in digital form. Everything from
Herb Alpert's 1980, to
Devo's Whip It.
In college, my classical tastes grew even wider, extending into the weird,
including this. Don't say you weren't warned. And, yes, I chose that recording because I am in it, though playing an assortment of percussion parts, rather than timpani. I started gigging in college, too. I also met my wife-to-be in college, and she expanded my musical palate in the other direction, learning to embrace Mozart backward through Bach and into the Renaissance. Speaking of which, a different friend introduced me to a different
Renaissance, as well as to the
Alan Parsons Project. And my suite mate behind the wall next to my bed inadvertently introduced me to a genre of music I had previously avoided, but learned to embrace with enough exposure, and the album seemed appropriate, too, given that I literally heard the sounds behind my
wall decorations.
My wedding
included this in the ceremony, and
this at the reception.
Since then, the circle just keeps widening, and my permanent collection includes classical pieces composed from literally the dark ages through the 21st century, voacl music in 18 different languages, and pop music from country, to sea shanties, to heavy metal, to soft rock, everything in between. About the only thing I don't dabble in is hip-hop/rap. Picking out a single soundtrack is tricky.