Lil Nas X to Diana Ross: South Dakotans select their Pride Month anthems for playlist

Support the LGBTQ community this Pride Month with your tunes, thanks to a playlist that’s growing as the community curates it.

Some songs on the Spotify-hosted list are obvious: Diana Ross’s hit “I’m Coming Out” or Madonna’s “Express Yourself.”

Others might require a little more explanation, like the Lil Nas X hit “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” which tops the playlist and was inspired by the film with the same name in which the two main characters call each other by their own names as an expression of love.

The ACLU of South Dakota launched the playlist for Pride Month 2019, according to Adam Jorgensen, digital media associate. With artists from ABBA to Cher and RuPaul, it has grown to nearly 200 songs with a runtime of about 12 hours. 

Jorgensen said the ACLU office, which also serves North Dakota and Wyoming, started using Spotify as an engagement tool for Election Day 2018. His team sent around the playlist to partners in the area and on social media, asking people to populate it with music that specifically energized people and got them excited for Election Day. 

The same concept applied for the Pride Month playlist, as people can go into the collaborative playlist and add whatever songs they’re listening to in celebration of the local LGBTQ and Two Spirit community. 

“This is something that we really just wanted to experiment at first, we didn’t have any crazy big goals in mind with it right away,” he said. “But it’s just nice to see the positive reactions to it. And then people will just randomly see us out and about and thank us for doing it or (say) that they’re listening to it.”

The ACLU also frequently uses its playlists at events, both in-person ones and virtual, as a way to keep the audience engaged and excited. They’ve especially been a hit at virtual events during the past year, Jorgensen said, because incorporating music can help combat Zoom fatigue. 

“Music is something that we always have going in the office or always have it kind of on in the background to help keep us going, so we hope that these playlists act as a way to inspire people to keep pushing ahead,” he said. “Because we know that our work in South Dakota as far as LGBTQ equality goes is far from over, so we like to think of these playlists as something that we’ve done together to help us get further together.”

The regional ACLU also is conducting a campaign this month called “Pride Is” where people can fill in the blank on what Pride means to them, Jorgensen said. The goal of the campaign is for people to share their stories related to Pride and encourage people to continue supporting the LGBTQ community outside of Pride Month. 

With the playlist and all the ACLU’s Pride Month programming, Jorgensen said he hopes they will raise awareness for the LGBTQ community and make fighting for equality a year-round habit.

“They’re just kind of easy things that we think people can do in their spare time and then get with us after June,” he said “We’re doing things throughout the year during the legislative session when we really need people to show up and use their voice. Whether it’s contacting our legislators, showing up to an event or a protest (or) going out and voting, we hope that these kind of pull people in to show them what we’re working on and then get them plugged in to everything else that we’re doing down the road.”

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