You Can’t Stop The Music: The YMCA isn’t a gay anthem?

Ahh yes “YMCA”, a party staple since 1978. Just like everyone in the English speaking world knows “Jingle Bell Rock” (Mean Girls reference), everyone in the English speaking world has danced to “YMCA”. Doesn’t matter if you’re gay, bi, or straight. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Greatest Generation, Silent Generation, Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, or Gen Z. Doesn’t matter what your political persuasion is. You know this song. You may find it tired, but it’s guaranteed to be played at any party. It was all over the place in the disco-dominated late 70s and this dance song has remained relevant nearly 50 years later. In 2024, synth-pop sensation Chappell Roan wrote her own homage with a sapphic twist, “Hot To Go”, and it’s infectious and complete with its own little dance with arm motions. It’s no surprise that President-elect Donald Trump loves this song. It’s catchy. Of course with Trump being Trump, he’s gonna do his goofy little YMCA dance that looks like he just got out of the shower and he’s holding a towel and he’s got either side of the towel in his hands and he’s moving it back and forth to dry himself.

While I wouldn’t say most people in show business are leftists, they’re definitely not fans of Trump. A lot of celebrities are proud card-carrying Democrats or at the very least Trump haters. I don’t want to be a broken record and explain why people hate Trump, but it’s easy to see. He’s a hypocrite, a liar, a cheater, and a narcissist and it’s insane to see Evangelical far right Christians bang on about “degeneracy”, meanwhile they go against Christianity’s teachings of no idolatry, humility over pride, loving thy neighbour, and being a good family man. Trump is the degenerate that you lot are supposed to hate, right? He’s been married four times, he can’t even name his favourite Bible verse, he speaks about women in a demeaning way, he’s said many racist things, he’s a threat to the LGBT community because of his alliances with Christofascists, he supports the genocide in Gaza, I could go on and on. Family values, my ass.

Donald Trump, being a boomer, has naturally had some classic rock and oldies bangers play at his rallies and for the most part the musicians hate it. Just a few examples:

1. The Rolling Stones have disapproved of Trump’s use of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and have threatened him with a lawsuit if he doesn’t stop playing their songs.
2. Elton John, a favourite of Trump, has said that he doesn’t want “Rocket Man” and “Tiny Dancer” played at his rallies.
3. Bruce Springsteen did not approve of Trump’s use of his famous anti-war song “Born in the USA” in 2016 and in return he endorsed Hillary Clinton.
4. John Fogerty of CCR is sick and tired of “Fortunate Son” being played by warmongers, who have missed the point of the song. Heck, Trump was a “Fortunate Son” himself by dodging the draft, nothing wrong with that but don’t use the poor as your cannon fodder.
5. Tom Petty’s estate were against Trump playing “I Won’t Back Down” at a rally in Oklahoma.
6. Phil Collins did not approve of Trump playing his famous song “In The Air Tonight”
7. Neil Young, a big critic of antivaxxers, was upset with Donald Trump for playing “Rockin’ in the Free World’ at his rallies, and even went as far as to sue him.
8. Queen did not approve of the Brian May composition “We Will Rock You” being used in a campaign video and forced him to take the video down.
9. ABBA were upset with Donald Trump and did not approve of his use of his music at rallies in Minnesota, where there are a lot of Swedish-Americans.
10. Johnny Marr was shocked and upset that Trump was playing a Smiths song at his rally.
11. Eric Burdon has thrown shade at Donald Trump for his use of “House of the Rising Sun” saying that a tale of sin and misery in a brothel suits Trump well and that a fitting song for this day and age is “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”.
12. Paul Rodgers of Free has sent his lawyer after Trump because he played “All Right Now” at rallies without his permission. Co-writer Andy Fraser was gay.

One 70s musician though has flip flopped on his opinion on Donald Trump’s use of his music and that is Victor Willis of the Village People, AKA the cop/naval officer, how fitting! I guess ACAB applies to the cop in the Village People too. Maybe he’s taking a page out of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia character Mac’s playbook by playing both sides. Stick your finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing before stating an opinion. No thoughts of your own, just following the crowd. Yeah, really shows your character.

Back in 2020, Victor Willis told Donald Trump to stop playing Village People songs at his rallies due to Trump handling the protests against police brutality in such a fascist way, with police spraying the crowds with tear gas and using batons and explosive devices against protesters. That was the final straw for him and so he made a statement saying “If Trump orders the US military to fire on his own citizens (on U.S. soil), Americans will rise up in such numbers outside of the White House that he might be forced out of office prior to the election.” Prior to this, he was actually okay with Donald Trump playing Village People songs because he wasn’t using the songs to endorse any particular policy and he was not being disrespectful about it (a total nothing burger of a statement).

This year after Trump’s victory, he’s changed his position and is actually in approval of Trump playing “YMCA” and he’s gone a step further, by insisting it was never a gay anthem and he will sue people if they call it a gay anthem. So weird how people can change on a dime like that. I wonder if money is a reason behind that 180… or maybe it’s a 360.

Let’s a little group lore and some related background information. First off, I want to mention that not all of the members of The Village People were gay, but the band definitely have gay roots and their name is a reference to Greenwich Village, a neighbourhood in New York City with a lot of gay history and community, besides it being folkie central in the 60s. Greenwich Village is where the Stonewall Inn is, the site of the Stonewall Riots in 1969. Just a few doors down was the East Coast’s first gay and lesbian bookstore The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop. Also on Christopher Street was the Mattachine Society’s offices, they were one of the early gay rights groups in NYC. Some important lesbian bars were the Duchess, Grove, and Pandora’s Box – those were on Grove Street. There’s a lot more gay history in the Village so I’ll share this list of landmarks from the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project.

Victor Willis has a wife and as far as I’m aware, he’s not bisexual. He has a Baptist background with his beginnings in music being him singing in church and his father was a preacher. He got noticed for his singing talents and he ended up meeting a French producer named Jacques Morali, who was gay and later died of AIDS in 1991, just nine days before Freddie Mercury died of AIDS. Morali had written some songs and he wanted Willis to sing them and so he sang on the Village People’s 1977 self-titled debut (which has a song called “San Francisco (You’ve Got Me)” – a gay mecca). It was a short album with only four songs written by Morali and his friend and fellow Frenchman Henri Belolo along with Americans Peter Whitehead and Phil Hurtt. They hadn’t even put together a band yet and the album was a success and they wanted to book Willis for TV appearances. They wanted to make an impact and so they casted a group kind of like how boy bands and girl groups are casted today. Morali put up ads looking for “Macho Types” who must meet the following requirements: can dance and has a moustache. Each “boy band” member played a different gay archetype that was common in Greenwich Village in the 70s and so they each played characters: a Native American wearing a headdress (don’t worry, Felipe Rose is Native American), a cowboy, a cop, a soldier, a biker/leather man, construction worker, and sailor. In 1978, the Village People released two songs with some pretty gay sounding titles: Macho Man and Cruisin’. Their 1979 album Go West had a few hits like the title track and “In The Navy”. So these guys were not a one-hit wonder. You could say their songs pretty much all sound the same, but they’re catchy.

Let’s break down the Facebook post and I’ll respond to the different points:

Victor Willis starts off the blog post with him identifying himself as one of the songwriters. A bit over a decade ago he sued and he got more rights and royalties. Very common practice in the old days to deprive musicians and songwriters their royalties. He wrote the lyrics of “YMCA” while Jacques Morali wrote the music. He says that all these complaints he had received from fans were the reason that he asked Trump to cease playing his music at rallies, because these complaints had become such a nuisance to him. His French partners (I’m assuming Jacques’ family?) wanted Trump to stop playing their music. I’m not surprised because a lot of Europeans don’t like Trump. Does this mean that he didn’t really care about what Trump was ordering police to do to protesters?

In the end, Trump ended up getting a political licence from the record label to play “YMCA” at rallies and Victor Willis said he was okay with it because he seems to be having fun with the song and he’s making the song more popular, which means more money in his pocket. To the tune of millions of dollars. Well, I guess anyone can be bought and paid for? So much for standing with the gay community, I guess. Hope the money’s worth it. Then again, I wouldn’t turn down millions, even if it’s coming from Donald Trump. That kind of money would be life changing for 99% of us. Maybe I’d donate part of it to a charity like Rainbow Railroad that helps LGBT people escape from countries where it’s illegal to be gay.

Now this bit about what the “YMCA is really about” is either Victor Willis being naive as hell or pandering to a right wing base in a time when gay rights are under attack by straightwashing and retconning. He’s now claiming that “YMCA” is just an innocent song about guys just hanging out with their buddies at the Y and playing basketball. Sure, Jan. It was known that the YMCA is where a lot of gay men would cruise. The 70s was very much a time when it was illegal to be gay and venues gay men would frequent were frequently raided by police. A lot of songs from the classic rock era: 50s-80s were full of coded language and clever wordplay and wouldn’t explicitly talk about gay sex because forget about airplay and chart performance, that would get you arrested and blacklisted. That’s like saying that those songs that were explicitly about cannabis (and drugs in general) were actually about something innocent. Who do you think you’re fooling? Do you think we’re idiots? Can us LGBT people not have something?

And on top of that, he’s announced that starting next year he’s going to sue news organisations who call “YMCA” a gay anthem. So he’s planning to use his millions to hire lawyers to silence people? Talk about being a Karen! Well, that’s not gonna make people want to play that song anymore. Better to just make you irrelevant and not talk about you then from now, on I guess.

He’s ignoring the whole concept of Roland Barthes’ “death of the author” and how once you put a work of art out there into the world, be it a poem, a song, a play, a novel, a movie, it’s out there for the audience to interpret as they wish and in art there’s no right or wrong interpretation. Sure, the author of the work might have their own meaning, but those consuming that piece of art are going to get their own interpretation from it too. It’s like when you say something that you think sounds really good in your head and then when you say it out loud you’re like wait, that doesn’t sound right when people respond in shock or concern.

It’s not a fact that the “YMCA” is a gay anthem, it’s an opinion and you can’t really sue over an opinion. It’s not up to you to decide whether or not something is an anthem for a community, that’s for other people to decide. Like I said in the previous paragraph, once you put music out there into the world to listen to, it’s now theirs to interpret and relate to as they wish. It’s not defamation to think that something is gay themed or homoerotic because that implies that there is shame in being gay. Which there isn’t! Being gay is just natural human variation, it’s just one way that people are. Even with the song’s gay connotation it was still a massive success then and now! I don’t see how you can consider yourself a gay ally and say you don’t mind gay people calling it their anthem when you’re seeing homosexuality as inferior by threatening lawsuits over this.

If anything, by fighting against this, you’re going to get some gay people doubling down and saying it’s a gay anthem even harder than they have before and another group boycotting the song. The choice is yours.

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