If you’re thinking of musicians from Minnesota, Prince and Bob Dylan are probably first to spring to mind.
Or so says state Sen. Rob Kupec, who’s sponsoring legislation to establish a song by each of those icons as official state songs to join the century-old chestnut “Hail! Minnesota.”
But there’s more to Minnesota music than Dylan and Prince, a lot more. So maybe the Legislature should look beyond “Girl from the North Country” and “Purple Rain” at other choice Minnesota tunes.
The Senate bill proposing those two classics has bipartisan sponsors: DFLers Kupec of Moorhead; John Hoffman of Champlin; Bobby Joe Champion of Minneapolis (Prince’s hometown); and Republicans Julia Coleman, who represents Chanhassen (home to Paisley Park), and Robert Farnsworth of Hibbing (Dylan’s hometown).
So we asked five Minnesotans to evaluate 10 songs by Minnesota-connected artists as other possibilities for official state song.
* Brian Oake of Minneapolis, a radio personality for three decades.
* Matt Steichen of Lakeville, co-author of the book “Bob Dylan in Minnesota,” who has seen 52 Dylan concerts.
* Heidi Vader of Minneapolis, a longtime Prince aficionado who founded the nonprofit Purple Playground to promote his legacy through music education.
* Kupec, a former TV meteorologist and first-term senator.
* Coleman, who calls herself “the Prince legislator” and said that she was going to turn down every song but “Purple Rain.”
Oake, like some of the others, thought there were too many good choices.
“Why don’t we have a state Spotify playlist?” he said. “And then, when we go to an event where the state song needs to be played, just hit shuffle and we get what we get.”