Every school dance has a quality to it, and whether a new experience or your last, it’s spent making new memories to the songs that play through the speakers. But every year, behind the music is a set of students who plan, set up, and execute the plans of the dances, while also creating the music and lighting behind them. This year, the DJs are seniors Brenden Wrigley and Cole Harnar. As DJs, they select music from a playlist for the dances. When selecting new music, they try to look out for what’s popular and what sounds good to dance too.
“There’s always been classics at dances like “Party Rock,” and in terms of adding new music we just think of what’s popular right now,” Wrigley said. Other songs students recommended through a Google Form posted around the school are selected and cultivated by Harnar and Wrigley. “If we’re keeping it real, maybe like 5 songs make it into the playlist. They might be good songs, but no one knows them, so they wouldn’t be worth playing,” Wrigley said.
“It’s gotta be popular,” Harnar said. Their current library has about 2000 songs, maybe more. The DJs organize it by genre or feeling and then in the moment they pick one out.
“It’s about mixing more than anything,” Harnar said. “It’s not all about song choice, but how you introduce that song. You have to be able to read the room…we don’t get it every time but we try our best,” Wrigley said.
The decisions of Wrigley and Harnar sometimes lead to them enduring the judgement of the student body. “For every new DJ, [ social studies and leadership teacher Mr.] Ihde gives a little lecture, because you’re not ever going to make everyone happy …the best thing that you can do is make as many people as possible enjoy the dance,” Harnar said.
However, because of the responsibility that they have, the DJs get a unique perspective of the dance. And while they DJ and set up for nearly every dance, prom is a little different.
“We probably aren’t going to DJ prom because we’re seniors,” Harnar said. “I’d rather be up there…you’re still interacting with people and kinda dancing too. It’s just a little different.”