What song/s made you a DT fan?

[Sacul]

So, what song was too awesome that made you want to check DT's discography?
I guess it was SOC in my case. One day I was bored and googled "the best instrumental rock songs", just to see what came up. I found a top with LTE's Paradigm Shift at #1 and Stream of Consciousness at #2 (btw, YYZ was there too). After hearing them I was like:

After a few weeks cheeking both LTE's albums, I got ADTOE - I still don't know how and why. A few months listening to their other albums made me a whore about DT hardcore fan.

[GPedrosa]

Beyond This Life
The Glass Prison
Panic Attack
Pull Me Under

[Sir Walrus Cauliflower]

I had heard PMU from GH when I was around 10 or 11. I later ended up making a Yahoo Answers account, and asking for band recommendations. DT was a name that kept coming up. PMU seemed to be mentioned most often, so I went and listened. I immediately thought "Holy , that was them who wrote this song?". After that I tried to check into them more, and Octavarium seemed to be pretty popular among DT fans. I didn't like it, mostly because I never got past JR's 3 minute and 48 second solo in the beginning. Luckily, I decided they were still worth looking into more, so I asked for ADTOE for my 13th birthday. 

That's what got me hooked, although at first my favorites were Outcry, OTBOA, and BTS. The more I listened the more I started to enjoy it. ADTOE was the "Bridge In The Sky", so to speak, to my current taste in music.

EDIT: I wish I could remember what album I listened to next... Interesting thread, by the way

[Rodni Demental]

Oh that's easy. First song I heard was Honor Thy Father. Drumming was just  . (But if I really think back, it might have been the Scenes from a Memory extracts during The Future of Trunks Dragon Ball Z film, but I couldn't have known it was DT unless I looked up music credits of something ). Second might have been Pull Me Under, but I also heard Constant Motion, Forsaken and other abstract unrememberable parts of Systematic Chaos at a similar time. (I have a feeling that I liked parts of Repentance and Ministry of Lost Souls but I couldn't have identified them at the time).

Few years later I heard Panic Attack and eventually A Rite of Passage. By this point I kept seeing the term "Dream Theater" creeping around various music related media on the internet so I caved after half a decade of being only slightly aware of them and got what was then, the new album Black Clouds and Silver Linings, went backwards from there and the rest is history. I highly anticipated ADTOE.

Funnily enough the Covers disc included in the deluxe edition of BL&SL was the second Dream Theater CD I actually listened to (dismissing Systematic Chaos a few years ago that I didn't really hear entirely or properly until after I was re-discovering songs I had heard before). Was.. quite an odd, but intriguing experience and certainly encouraged me to dive deeper into their music.

[ThatOneGuy2112]

My first DT songs were Pull Me Under, Take the Time, and Metropolis Pt. 1. They were all amazing and I remember being taken aback since it was very different from what I was used to, but Metropolis just blew me the hell away. I was hooked on instant.

[krands85]

One of my friends played me something from Octavarium. I can't remember which song, or if it was more than 1 song - but I presume TROAE at least was played, since it opens the album.

Forgot about them a bit until Systematic Chaos came out I think. I remember playing Forsaken over and over again for a while (though it's far from one of my favourite DT songs - or even types of DT song - these days). But coming from a more metal-orientated background, Train of Thought was probably the album that really made me a big fan - In the Name of God was my favourite DT track for quite a while, then I branched out more into the rest of the discography.

[GPedrosa]

Once a friend was listening to The Glass Prison and talking about the meaning of the song, but that didn't hook me permanently. But in another day this guy was listening to Beyond This Life and staging the story (awesome moment, hahaha). This imediately hooked me. So I listened to the whole discography and fell in love for the band.

[Tunnel Vision]

My brother's friend played the Keyboard Solo from Live at Budokan and I was immediately interested. The next day, I looked up DT's live videos and found The Glass Prison. https://youtu.be/8h81PggfE8I

I couldn't wait to get home from school for the next five days and listen to that song over and over again...

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

Pull Me Under, I suppose, although I wasn't a big fan of it at first.

[TAC]

Images And Words

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

That's a pretty good song.

[CharlesPL]

Images And Words

This

[Nearmyth]

Let's see, my first real DT songs were ones I was video-surfing through YouTube and often came back to...

A Nightmare To Remember
Octavarium
Ministry of Lost Souls
The Glass Prison
The Count of Tuscany

Some more modern ones like that

Then I remember lisening to Metropolis Pt. 1 and Learning to Live for the first time and thinking "...What is this shit?"

I didn't really "get" Images And Words at first 

[Sir Walrus Cauliflower]

Let's see, my first real DT songs were ones I was video-surfing through YouTube and often came back to...

A Nightmare To Remember
Octavarium
Ministry of Lost Souls
The Glass Prison
The Count of Tuscany

Some more modern ones like that

Then I remember lisening to Metropolis Pt. 1 and Learning to Live for the first time and thinking "...What is this shit?"

I didn't really "get" Images And Words at first 

I didn't either, especially Metropolis. Metropolis was the last song I came to enjoy from I&W, but now it's one of my favorites from it.

[King Postwhore]

Heard Pull Me Under on the radio in 92 and I had to have the album.

[bl5150]

Heard Pull Me Under on the radio in 92 and I had to have the album.

[Destiny Of Chaos]

I heard Pull Me Under once and twice on the radio. But I became a fan when I took my Step-Dad's cassette copy of Images & Words. After Metropolis finished.... I knew that I had stumbled across an incredible band.

[DebraKadabra]

Heard Pull Me Under on the radio in 92 and I had to have the album.

Yep.

[yeah_93]

The first time I was introduced to DT was with Rock Band 2 - Panic Attack was in it (suck it haters). Anyways, I, not being a huge music listener, thought it was a weird song. I mean it was an 8 minute song, seemed very difficult to perform and had this epic feeling about it. One of the trivia in Rock Band 2 said it was a relatively short song for DT - because they had composed songs up to 42 minutes. Naturally, I thought it was a lie (A 42 minute song? Who the hell would make that?). I didn't check them out at the time to see if that statement was true (Again, I kinda didn't listen to music at that time). So, after a while, I was reading reviews of Guitar Hero: World Tour (Yes, I like those games, don't make fun of me), and it said the song used for the credits was a poor choice, or something along the lines. Naturally, when I played the game, I went to the credits to see if it was true. And "damn", I thought, "that reviewer must be crazy; that song kicks serious ass". It also had a nice ring to it and was quite catchy. Again, it was a really weird song, as it was 8 minutes long, and I noticed it was from the same band. The song was Pull me Under, and after that, I decided to check the band out. And from that day, I progressively (no pun intended) grew into a fan.

[Zook]

Images And Words

[Big Hath]

The Big Medley

true story

[Setlist Scotty]

Not sure if I could single out just one song, but I'd say WDaDU in general since I purchased it a few months after it was released. Listened to that album repeatedly until IaW eventually came out. If I had to pick one song, I guess it would've been my favorite of the time: TOWHtStS

[Laughingplace56]

I remember looking up TDoE and thought "WTF is this shit they aren't even keeping a beat" 

Didn't listen to them for a while then thought I'd give them another chance since they seemed to be mentioned quite a bit. I heard Honor Thy Father and thought it kicked ass being from metal ground before progressive. I then heard the solo from TCoT and thought it was amazing, so I kept looking them up and listening to them and realized I was so wrong to automatically shun them off and started to learn how music didn't have to live in the restraints of 4/4 timing and could extend into different, beautiful realms of odd time signatures and obtuse arrangements.

[Hayden]

"Fatal Tragedy". When I was about 12, my sister was going through a huge downloading stage. She used to have Limewire binges, and then listen to all of her illegally-accumulated, mammoth playlists throughout the week as a form of discovery. Anyway, we were in the back of the car one day, on a family road trip, when she asked me if I "wanted to hear a cool solo" (knowing how much of a rock fan I was). I gave it a listen, preparing to criticize it for "not being as good as Deep Purple" or something. As it turned out, my sister had actually stumbled onto something great, and I was blown away.

In between then and buying Scenes from a Memory (which was a few years, for some reason), I heard "A Nightmare to Remember" and "A Rite of Passage", which confirmed DT's overall quality for me.   

I remember looking up TDoE and thought "WTF is this shit they aren't even keeping a beat" 

Didn't listen to them for a while then thought I'd give them another chance since they seemed to be mentioned quite a bit. I heard Honor Thy Father and thought it kicked ass being from metal ground before progressive. I then heard the solo from TCoT and thought it was amazing, so I kept looking them up and listening to them and realized I was so wrong to automatically shun them off and started to learn how music didn't have to live in the restraints of 4/4 timing and could extend into different, beautiful realms of odd time signatures and obtuse arrangements.

I hadn't encountered odd time signatures (applied in the same way as prog metal bands generally use them) prior to hearing DT, and they threw me off a little as well. But I just remember thinking "well, everything else they're doing is amazing, so surely this must make sense to somebody".

[Tom Bombadil]

As I Am was the first song I heard. I wouldn't say I was hooked though until I heard Lines in the Sand and ANTR at about the same time.  I got like 6 albums in the next few weeks after that.

[aprilethereal]

Stream Of Consciousness
As I Am
Endless Sacrifice

[Scorpion]

I've told the story a few times already, but no harm in telling it again, I suppose.

Sometime before the release of BC&SL, I went through a giant Frets on Fire phase, which is basically a free Guitar Hero clone, where you can download a shitload of user-made songs to play, and even create your own, if you have too much time on your hands. Anyway, I just got the biggest song pack that I could find, and one of the last songs in that song pack was In the Name of God, and it was the song that I had to play the longest until I finally got it, due to that insane unison solo. So by the time I had finally managed that, I was in love with the song. Got Live at Budokan next, because I'm basically a live junkie, and it had In the Name of God on it... and the rest, as they say, is history.

[Dreamer]

All of them on DT12 - The Bigger Picture is maybe one of my faves. And most of ADTOE too, Breaking All Illusions is breathtaking.

[Bertielee]

Metropolis, on LatM.

B.Lee

[mikeyd23]

My buddy showed me the Live at Budokan DVD to introduce me to the band... So I guess technically As I Am was the first song I heard, and I was pretty much hooked.

[son_ov_hades]

I heard A Change Of Seasons on local college radio and was blown away, that song hooked me immediately.

[As I Am]

From the first moment I heard Metropolis, Pt. 1 in 1996 I was "IN"!

[Sacul]

Images And Words

A top 5 song for sure.

[PixelDream]

Pull me Under got me interested. SFAM got me hooked, with the middle of the album being my favorite part (Fatal Tragedy, Beyond this Life, Home etc.).

[Mebert78]

I heard "Lie" on the radio in 1994 and soon thereafter bought Awake at my local Sam Goody.