A 7th grade performance of the musical Dear Edwina, Jr. I played Ziggy Montego, a little Jamaican boy trying to raise money for his steel drum band. I'm confident it's some of my best work to date.
I started writing music as a teen. I will be unabashedly predictable and say that Jonathan Larson and JRB's work were eye-openers because of the way they married contemporary music with storytelling.
My current vision is to create songs that are story-driven but also heavily pop-influenced bops that you could hear out-of-context on the radio and still enjoy.
Taking big, complex, nebulous feelings or thoughts and condensing them into a lyric. It's hard work, but pure magic when it all comes together!