Victor Willis, 73, lead singer of the Village People, and writer of the Trump campaign dance hit “Y.M.C.A.,” says the song is not a gay anthem, and is embracing TFG’s use of the song despite many complaints.
According to Willis, the lyrics “You can hang out with all the boys” is “simply 1970s Black slang for Black guys hanging out together for sports, gambling or whatever. There’s nothing gay about that.”
- Despite the group’s name being derived from Greenwich Village, at the time a vibrant gay neighborhood, the French co-writer of the music Jacques Morali dying of AIDS, the recruitment of the band from New York gay clubs featuring an ad that read “Macho Types Wanted: Must Dance And Have A Moustache,” and the performers being dressed as fantasy gay characters, Willis says he knew nothing about the Y being a hang out for gays when writing the lyrics.
- Willis now claims the famous song is entirely heterosexual – and anyone suggesting something to the contrary should “get their minds out of the gutter.”
Since 2020 Willis says he received many complaints that TFG was using the anthem and asked him to stop because the complaints were annoying. But the Trump campaign had obtained a political use license from BMI and continued to use the song, and eventually the financial benefit trickled down to Willis.
The song, which went to number one in 17 countries in 1978, has been played at Trump rallies to the tune of millions of dollars for Willis, as he wrote on Facebook: “The financial benefits have been great … YMCA is estimated to gross several million dollars since the President Elect’s continued use of the song. Therefore, I’m glad I allowed the President Elect’s continued use of YMCA. And I thank him for choosing to use my song.”
Willis is now threatening to sue every news organization that has falsely referred “either in their headlines or alluded to in the base of the story, that ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is somehow a gay anthem because such notion is based solely on the song’s lyrics alluding to elicit activity for which it does not.”
“However, I don’t mind that gays think of the song as their anthem,” he assured. “The true anthem is ‘Y.M.C.A.’s’ appeal to people of all strips [sic] including President-elect Trump. But the song is not really a gay anthem other than certain people falsely suggesting that it is. And this must stop because it is damaging to the song,” Willis concluded.
