The first one: Billy Joel's Greatest Hits, Volumes 1 and 2

Kids love TV theme songs. My friend's 4-year-old loves the theme song from The Office; it's been moving him to do the Running Man since he was 3. My childhood friend Jeremy was into The Greatest American Hero; he wanted to be the GAH, and being able to bellow the theme song by heart seemed like a good first step towards that goal. The first pop song I ever really loved was also from TV; I used to hold my Fisher Price tape recorder up to those little TV speaker holes every night (the show was in reruns) in an attempt to better catch the magic.

Most little kids, I assume, don't pay too much attention to top 40 radio or the best sellers list at iTunes, but they do pay attention to their favorite TV show. The show's theme song then gets inextricably intertwined in their minds with something they fiercely love, and just hearing that first note can be enough to send them off into fits of ecstasy. It also helps that theme songs by their nature are (or should be) the epitome of short, to-the-point, hook-laden pop.

The song that bowled me over was a top 40 hit that had been rerecorded and squeezed and molded into the tight theme song format for the sitcom Bosom Buddies. My dad informed me that the song was originally by a guy named Billy Joel, and that I could have it on a record that I could own and play anytime! Next thing I knew, we were at Sound Warehouse, and my dad was buying me Billy Joel's Greatest Hits, a double LP!

I spent that evening sitting in front of my dad's stereo system repeatedly listening to "My Life" through massive headphones, completely ignoring every other song on the album. I would eventually learn to love pretty much anything Joel did, but not that night.

Or the next day, when my mom announced that my little sister and I were going to our grandparents' house for the afternoon. I went into panic mode, since all I had been doing and all I wanted to do was listen to "My Life." I started the turntable again, hit Record on my Fisher Price, held the recorder up to the speakers, and got the opening 20 seconds on tape before Mom said it was time to go.

I spent the afternoon at my grandparents' listening to that 20 seconds of opening piano rumble over and over. It was indefatigable love.

Side note: I would set the album cover on a music stand while listening to the record, and I noticed that Billy's eyes would follow you no matter where you went in the room. Kind of scary and still true.