Village People lyricist praises Trump’s use of ‘YMCA’ and denies it’s a ‘gay anthem’
Victor Willis of Village People has threatened legal action for publications dubbing “YM.C.A” a “gay anthem”. (Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Associated Television International)
Village People lyricist Victor Willis has praised Donald Trump’s use of “YMCA” during campaign rallies, and threatened legal action against media outlets calling the group’s hit song a gay anthem, despite two of the original band members being out gay men.
Willis, who is heterosexual, has previously denied the track had any links to the LGBTQ+ community, and said that from January his wife, who is the band’s manager, would sue any news organisation that refers to the song as a gay anthem, NBC reported.
While the singer-songwriter said he doesn’t mind people considering the single a gay anthem, he wrote on Facebook post on Monday (2 December) that such assumptions were “damaging to the song” and that “once again” people should get their “minds out of the gutter”.
He acknowledged that the band’s first album “was totally about gay life”, but he “knew nothing about the Y being a hangout for gays” at the time he wrote the lyrics.
“When I say, ‘hang out with all the boys’ that is simply 1970s Black slang for Black guys hanging out together for sports, gambling or whatever. There’s nothing gay about that,” he said.
Willis has previously said the track was “written as an expression of urban youths having fun at the YMCA”, adding: “The words were crafted by me to be taken any number of ways but not specific to gays. It’s much broader than that, the song is universal. I don’t mind that gays think [it’s] about them.”
He told news.com.au: “I wrote it about hanging out in urban neighbourhoods in my youth. ‘You can hang out with all the boys’ was a term about me and my friends playing basketball at the Y.”
The band has had a long association with the LGBTQ+ community, however, and two of its original members – Felipe Rose and Randy Jones – are out gay men, as was co-creator Jacques Morali.
The band’s name refers to Manhattan’s queer-friendly Greenwich Village, while the costumes they wore were reportedly a nod to gay sub-culture in the 70s.
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