Village People fans are only just realizing true | Music News

The Village People burst onto New York’s disco scene in 1977, sporting an immediately recognizable aesthetic rooted in homosexual stereotypes, and delivering a string of chart-toppers, including Macho Man, In the Navy, and Go West, that includes lyrics that referenced homosexual tradition.

However, do not dare suggest that their greatest smash hit, YMCA, has any connection to the homosexual neighborhood, warns founding member Victor Willis, who penned the global Number One’s phrases.

Willis insists that the Village People observe is unquestionably not a homosexual anthem and has issued threats of legal motion against anybody daring enough to declare in any other case.

The YMCA has gained renewed prominence in current years after being embraced by President Donald Trump as his marketing campaign anthem, with Trump routinely ending his rallies by performing a distinctive fist-pumping routine to the disco traditional.

The pivotal lyric “You can hang out with all the boys” was broadly understood at the time as coded language for homosexual encounters in the group’s fitness services and swimming pools.

“It’s weird that it’s Trump’s favorite song, but I guess with Epstein gone, he’s been a little desperate.”

The observe, which has moved some 12 million copies, gained a contemporary viewers after Trump embraced it. While quite a few artists have declined to allow Trump to use their music, Willis is thrilled to have equipped his marketing campaign theme.

He posted 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 the YMCA. And I thank him for choosing to use my song.”

He’s also vigorously defending YMCA’s popularity, saying “Come January 2025, my wife will start suing each and every news organization that falsely refers to YMCA, either in their headlines or alluded to in the base of the story, that YMCA is somehow a gay anthem because such notion is based solely on the song’s lyrics alluding to [illicit] activity, for which it does not.”

In March 2020, the Library of Congress characterised the track as “an American phenomenon” and included it in the National Recording Registry, which safeguards audio recordings deemed to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

The Village People will also carry out at the World Cup draw 2026, with Donald Trump in attendance.