Instantly identifiable music

Unbelievable - EMF

Honky Tonk Women - Rolling Stones

Was also thinking Walk of Life by Dire Straits, but it does take longer than I thought to get to the whistling bit.

Interesting. I always get the F1 theme, but it takes me a while to get The Chain, the F1 theme is taken from the middle of the song, one of very few I can think of where the middle bit is the most famous.

I actually meant the F1 theme bit (there's another bit of music now that comes up if you just search F1 theme).  I had to Google what the underlying track was to distinguish it from the Brian Tyler one, which is also quite identifiable.

easily
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Beethoven’s fifth

In the same vein, Sibelius's Finlandia. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaa buh. If it's cultured but makes you feel like you'll get et by a shark, it's Finlandia.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

My Girlfriends Girlfriend - Type O Negative

Worked really well as ring tone in mobile phones back in the day, of course I used this one for personal ring tone for my Mrs. My son was toddler at time and used to recognize it too, ”Mom is calling”.

I find this fascinating - beyond the actual question, which I'll come back to in a minute. That a standard contemporary music band is mainly guitar, bass, drums and a voice. Maybe keyboards, maybe more than 1 guitar. And we have basically the pentatonic scale, and a series of chord types (major, minor, dim, etc.)  And pretty much everything uses that formula. And yet people can write new tunes all the time, that are different and yet distinctive, even without the voice. You can hear a tune you'd never heard before and think Smiths, or Arctic Monkeys, or whatever....

On the original question. How can one chord on a guitar instantly be identified, or one drum beat?

Boys Don't Cry - The Cure

Hard Days Night - Beatles

How Soon is Now - Smiths (bit of a cheat because of the layered reverb, but I saw an interview with Marr where he just played the chord without the effects and it's still HSIN)

Or E minor Maj7 (not a start to a tune but instantly recognisable -I can't find a video that doesn't name it but grab a guitar and play it)

Or drums - Light My Fire / Doors, that one drum hit.

Hell's Bells - AC/DC

Golden Brown – The Stranglers

Echo Beach – Martha and the Muffins

Angelic Upstarts - Police Oppression

Police car siren starts it, but that opening riff!

The car door in Autobahn