Like millions of other brides through the decades, I too danced to The Temptations’ “My Girl” with my Daddy.

Such a basic choice (sorry, other brides) didn’t come easily, but it was only because “Just My Imagination” isn’t nearly as danceable.

But as one of the best examples of the Temptations’ incomparable storytelling, “Just My Imagination” always had a place among my favorite songs to stand on my Daddy’s feet dancing to, so I chose the next best thing.

It’s a sad song masquerading as a love story, but so dreamy in Eddie’s silky falsetto that unless you’re listening closely, it’s easy to lose yourself in the melody alone.

But then again, the story’s reveal in the chorus was probably just so much more evident to me because that’s when my Daddy would usually start singing along in his full bass. He’d bellow into that first “but” with such a richness and contrast to the previous verses, that it was impossible not to take notice, especially when I was about belly high and perfectly placed to feel those notes rumble in his chest.

My whole family immersed us in music, but with my Daddy, it had a way of being a full-sensory and out-of-body experience at the same time, where we could escape anything and feel everything. With him, music was more than melodies, harmonies, poetic lyrics and arrangements. He showed me that I could live a whole other life in just a matter of minutes, and that some of the best love songs didn’t have catchy tunes with fairytale endings. But that didn’t mean they weren’t worth each and every listen.

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