Alicia Keyes is the perfect Father’s Day morning accompaniment to breakfast, coffee and emails…for today only. Stay with me, this post is going to bounce around and be random and eclectic, just like my dad.

It’s not surprising that I woke up thinking about music. My father, after all, is a musician. Classical music was a staple in my home growing up. Pops raved about Mozart, Schubert, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and others the same way I do about John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson and other artists who regularly scrape my soul. We may not become emphatic about precisely the same things, but passion is indeed hereditary.

I’m on a perpetual hunt for the optimal music for every moment. Every variable matters. For instance, if we strip out the coffee, the music should change. Without the work, maybe Stanley Clarke would fit the bill this morning. But frankly, it’s all about the moment.

You remember this beauty from Jerry Maguire.

Cruise went through several “not quite right,” pieces before he found his Tom Petty classic. Our moods, our activities, our holidays all play an active role. It’s personal, it’s subjective, but it’s a brain thing.

As the music plays, many different brain centers can be activated, depending on whether the music is familiar or new, happy or sad, in a major or minor key, or—perhaps most importantly for work purposes—whether it has lyrics or not.

I don’t mind lyrics when I work. I can roll through a shit ton of emails and still flash an internal smile at the notion that Keyes is covering Prince here.

She kills it. Her voice is cathartic, soothing. For what it’s worth, Prince’s original is even more haunting and spectacular. Because he’s Prince, it’s tough to track (see?) down on youtube, so you’re on your own. Trust me, it’s worth the hunt.

So I’m giving the nod to Alicia in the moment. But the aforementioned Johnson’s Cross Road Blues will most certainly find its way onto my Father’s Day Soundtrack.

What did you roll out this morning? What’s on your playlist for today?

Strong Mind,

Kap