Your 2020 Virtual Pride Playlist: SORTED

Savas Abadsidis May 25, 2020

With virtually every Gay Pride celebration canceled around the globe due to the Coronavirus pandemic and with organizers migrating celebrations to virtual and online ones, it’s fair to ask what will Pride mean this year?

According to Vox: Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s just no way to facilitate in-person festivals for the foreseeable future. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last month that NYC Pride — along with every other mass gathering event in the city in June — will be canceled. This follows a larger pattern of other cities around the world forgoing in-person Prides this year. “Over the last month, we’ve had now about 280 Prides globally that have canceled or postponed because of Covid-19,” said Steve Taylor, board member of the European Pride Organizers Association (EPOA).

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAk3a5hHqQc/?igshid=1wq5sahykf45x

Quarantine & Chill ????

Pride organizers say the show will go on, though — albeit in a much different format. The EPOA and InterPride, a consortium of local Pride organizations in the US and internationally, are organizing a massive, worldwide Pride event to be held exclusively online.

The folks behind this year’s online Pride felt it was important not to skip a year as Pride can be important to queer people who are attending for the first time.

“Every Pride organizer that you talk to will have a story about someone that has come to their Pride, whose life has been changed by Pride,” said Taylor. “It might be the first time in their life that they felt safe, that they felt part of the community, that they felt valued and loved or that they felt surrounded by people who are like them rather than feeling like an outsider. It’s really critical for Pride organizers — because we believe passionately in our movement and its transformative effects on people — that we find a way to deliver that event in a safe way [during the pandemic].”

However you celebrate Pride this year we’ve culled a short list of songs for a Pride playlist that are essential.