Help Xtra find the greatest Pride anthem of all time

Lady Gaga? Gloria Gaynor? Lil Nas X? Which artist’s song tops them all?

We’ve all been there. It’s Pride Month, you’re at the gay club or on the edge of a Pride parade or cozied up at home listening to music with some close pals and that song comes on. You know the one—as soon as the first few beats start to play, everyone around you lights up. The entire group comes alive, and almost certainly someone (or you) shouts “I LOVE THIS SONG.” Even if you don’t know every word, your heart knows it all. It feels like coming home and falling in love and meeting someone new all at once. Simply put, it’s an anthem. 

We want your help to find out what that song is. 

In honour of Pride Month, Xtra is asking our readers to choose the most iconic Pride anthem of all time. 

Is it Queen’s “I Want to Break Free”? How about Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”? (Which a 2007 study literally defined as THE gay anthem.) Or a more modern hit from Lil Nas X or MUNA?

If there’s one thing the queers love to do, it’s to have strong opinions about things. So, we need your help to narrow down the top Pride anthem from our list of 32 songs.

Every Monday for the next month, we’ll be soliciting your opinion through our weekly Xtra Asks poll on Twitter. The winner from each group of four will move on to the next round, and so on, until we’ve found the number-one most iconic Pride anthem of all time. 

At the start of June, we started things off with four groups of four songs for you to vote on, with four songs moving on to our Top 8 — “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross, “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga, “It’s Raining Men” by the Weather Girls and “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn.

Starting June 13, the next round of songs was available to vote on on Xtra‘s Twitter page. The four victors (“Dancing Queen”, “Make Me Feel,” “Call Me By Your Name” and “Supermodel”) moved on to the top 8.

And now we’re at our Top 8. Who will move on to the semi-finals and then the finals from there?

Be sure to vote now on Xtra‘s Twitter page and weigh in on how your favourites are doing in the comments below!

Senior editor Mel Woods is an English-speaking Vancouver-based writer and audio producer and a former associate editor with HuffPost Canada. A proud prairie queer and ranch dressing expert, their work has also appeared in Vice, Slate, the Tyee, the CBC, the Globe and Mail and the Walrus.

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