What about a song captivates you the most?

[Teh_Jakester]

I really only pay attention to the guitar and/or vocals, unless the other parts really stand out (i.e. keyboards in Permanent, drums in Hot for Teacher, etc.).
Edit: Or I'm making a Rock Band list.

[cherokeesam]

Interesting question, and damned hard to answer.

I don't necessarily vote yea or nay over just the intro, because I know full well that many songs are multi-part and don't start "getting good" until later in the song....but any good song definitely needs a hook to start you off.

In retrospect, I'd say it's the riff and the melody that's most important to keep me listening; after that, I definitely look for damn good lyrics (if I can't hear/understand the lyrics, it's a major turn-off for me --- that's one reason I can't stand Cookie Monster death metal vocals).

And yeah, popularity has no effect whatsoever on what I listen to.

[Lolicat]

A good vocalist or good lyrics can make it, but when I say 'good vocalist,' I don't want some warbling idiot, just someone with a good voice I personally enjoy hearing.

[maidener]

other : pure power of the song

[AHXtreme42]

Interesting responses.

Yeah, it is a tough question to answer. I still see many people went with the cop-out answer :-P (for example, some others used Songwriting as 'other' - well, songwriting IS the Intro, the Ending, the Chorus, the Message and the Beat...so, yeah)
But I predicted it in the original post. It seems very unnatural to have to chose a top factor over all of them, because like I said, many things influence you to like a song or not, so it's very very hard to choose the top one for you.

Personally, I went with Advanced Musicality. When a band can demonstrate that they have some musical knowledge, and go beyond what many bands do, that song has a higher chance of being a favorite of mine. Sure if a song's chorus is good I can like it, but more other factors need to be in it's favor as well. Advanced musicality can cover things like smart instrumentation as well.

Anyways keep it up, try real hard to pin it down to one, because we all have many factors which influence us, but try to pick your favorite!