Village People front man says ‘YMCA’ isn’t a gay anthem – and he’ll sue anyone who disagrees
By Lianne Kolirin, CNN
(CNN) — The Village People’s lyricist and lead singer has hit out at the “false assumption” that the band’s biggest hit, “YMCA,” is a “gay anthem.”
Victor Willis, who headed up the 1970s disco band and wrote the song with producer Jacques Morali, has taken to social media to insist that it was not written with the gay community in mind – and that those who suggest otherwise could soon face legal action.
“There’s been a lot of talk, especially of late, that Y.M.C.A. is somehow a gay anthem,” Willis, who wrote the lyrics for the 1978 hit, said on Facebook on Monday. “As I’ve said numerous times in the past, that is a false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay, and that the first Village People album was totally about gay life.
“This assumption is also based on the fact that the YMCA was apparently being used as some sort of gay hangout and since one of the writers was gay and some of the Village People are gay, the song must be a message to gay people. To that I say once again, get your minds out of the gutter. It is not.”
The song, from the band’s third studio album, “Cruisin,’” has spent years as an informal anthem of the LGBTQ community. But it has also been more recently embraced by Donald Trump, who has been playing it at presidential campaign rallies. A recent video posted online showed the president-elect dancing to the hit with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Mar-A-Lago over Thanksgiving.
Like many others in the music industry, including ABBA and the Foo Fighters, Willis initially objected to his song being used by Trump. But in his Facebook post he gave the president-elect his blessing to use the song, which has surged once again in popularity, topping the Billboard chart for digital sales of dance and electronic music this week.
The YMCA – whose full name is the Young Men’s Christian Association – was originally set up as a non-political Christian movement in London in 1844. Commonly referred to as “the Y,” it has since become a global organization where men are welcome to come and exercise, play sport and seek shelter.
Willis said that when writing the song he had no idea that the YMCA was “a hang out for gays.”
He said: “I therefore wrote Y.M.C.A. about the things I knew about the Y in the urban areas of San Francisco such as swimming, basketball, track, and cheap food and cheap rooms. And 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.
“So, to the extent that Y.M.C.A. is considered a gay anthem based on the fact that gays once used certain YMCA’s for elicit activity, the assumption that the song alludes to that is completely misguided.”
Willis’ feelings on the matter are so strong that he is now threatening legal action over the issue.
He continued: “Since I wrote the lyrics and ought to know what the lyrics I wrote is really about, come January 2025, my wife will start suing each and every news organization that falsely refers to Y.M.C.A., 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.
“But you’d be hard-pressed to find Y.M.C.A. on the play list at any gay club, parade or other gay activity in a way that would suggest it’s somehow an anthem to the community other than alluding to illicit activity, which is defamatory, and damaging to the song. But it stops in 2025.”
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