Morning Motivators

Bracing guitars, soaring harmonies, an airtight backbeat — U2's "Beautiful Day" is the perfect pace-setter for our Morning Motivators Essentials, a stadium-sized anthem with the power to practically knock you over. Throw in some Stones (the handclaps and inescapable strut of "Start Me Up"), an absolutely timeless Madonna (the T&T — Timberlake & Timbaland — explosions of "4 Minutes"), a slice of Feist (the plucked banjo strings and spare finger-snaps of "1234"), and No Doubt at their poppiest (the four-alarm disco inferno of "Hella Good"), and you'll be halfway through your muffin before you know it…

As for finishing the friggin' thing and actually heading out the door, our Next Steps will get your feet going faster than a "you're late!" call from the boss.

If the honking trumpets and churning, chugging six-string behind Cake's "The Distance" aren't enough of a wake-up call, we stuffed this next tier of Morning Motivators with enough caffeine supplements to send anyone bouncing off the walls. That includes the sun-baked SoCal rock of "Santa Monica," "California," and "Island in the Sun," the wishful thinking of "Manic Monday," the pep-rally pop of "We Got the Beat," the fuzzy call-and-response choruses of "Timebomb," and the sky-scraping harmonies of "There She Goes" and "There's No Other Way."

Now, take a deep breath and one last swig of OJ — we've still got a hefty group of eye-opening Deep Cuts to go through.

If you're not already at the office by now, you're probably busy dropping the kids off at school or scoring a tall cappuccino at the coffee spot down the street. With the morning's pre-lunch leg now taunting you, be sure to cue up our Deep Cuts — the future-shocked Motown nods of "D.A.N.C.E.," the bleacher-stomping rap-rock of "The Seed (2.0)," the ecstatic, synth-doused indie pop of "Time to Pretend," the psychedelic sun-gazing of the Polyphonic Spree, and at least two tracks that'll make you wish the '90s never ended (the campy hip-hop of "Jump" and the Gen-X jam "In the Meantime").

As we all know — oh, do we ever — the hardest part of any workday starts with a wailing alarm clock and ends with a bleary-eyed mad dash to work or school. That's why we carefully compiled the perfect score to your morning, whether you just switched to decaf and really need a pick-me-up or simply want a few hours of cubicle-pleasing pop, rock, and rap songs to keep you focused until lunchtime. Be careful not to blurt out, "Oh, I remember that song!" too much, though, as this set rolls out nothing but hits and fan favorites from the past few decades, running from the Stones and an old-school pass-the-mic session ("Rapper's Delight") right on through such recent radio staples as Paramore's "That's What You Get," Maroon 5's "Won't Go Home Without You," Lupe Fiasco's "Superstar," and Duffy's "Mercy."