Village People’s Victor Willis - the founder member and songwriter who performed as the group’s cop - has decided that no publicity is bad publicity and officially declared that he’s now totally OK with incoming US President Donald Trump playing ‘YMCA’ at his political rallies.
What he’s not OK with is people mocking Trump for embracing a ‘gay anthem’ as his signature song, because he wants to make it entirely clear that ‘YMCA’ is definitely not a ‘gay anthem’.
Indeed, while other artists have sued Trump over his use of their songs, if there is going to be any legal action in relation to ‘YMCA’, it will, says Willis, be against any pesky journalists who continue to insist that gay anthem ‘YMCA’ is, in fact, a ‘gay anthem’.
In a new social media post, Willis insists that he doesn’t mind if the gay community “thinks of the song as their anthem”, but adds that journalists suggesting that that was his intent when writing the lyrics could be on the receiving end of a lawsuit filed by his wife. Yes, you heard him. His wife.
In fact, according to Willis, one of the main reasons that his song definitely isn’t a gay anthem is that he was blissfully unaware that buildings operated by the YMCA youth organisation were anything more than a place to hang out with the boys, play sport, and maybe shower together.
The fact that they were “a hang out for gays” in the 1970s, he says, was news to him, and he “therefore wrote ‘YMCA’ 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”.
As for the line “you can hang out with all the boys”, that, he goes on, “is simply 1970s black slang for black guys hanging-out together for sports, gambling or whatever - there’s nothing gay about that”.
For a man with a wife, any suggestion that he might have been singing about using the YMCA for any sort of purpose other than the obvious is doubtless very upsetting. With that in mind, from next year, “my wife will start suing each and every news organisation that falsely refers to ‘YMCA’” as a gay anthem, because “such a notion is based solely on the song’s lyrics alluding to elicit activity for which it does not”.
When it comes to Trump’s use of ‘YMCA’, Willis never got as far as filing a lawsuit, though he did previously complain about that usage, and reportedly issued a cease and desist against the President, which was then ignored. Village People label Scorpio Music also threatened legal action after Trump shared a video made by a third party that featured the group’s music.
At events, Trump can rely on the blanket licence he gets from collecting society BMI to legally play ‘YMCA’. Though the society does actually allow its members to opt out of the licences it issues to political campaigns and in the last couple of years various artists have done just that after seeing their songs played at a Trump rally.
But, Willis says, he decided to not withdraw ‘YMCA’ from the BMI blanket. “I said to my wife one day, hey, ‘Trump seems to genuinely like ‘YMCA’ and he’s having a lot of fun with it’”, he writes. To that end, “I simply didn’t have the heart to prevent his continued use of my song”.
So, despite seeing other artists pull their songs from Trump’s licence, “I told my wife to inform BMI to not withdraw” YMCA from “the Trump campaign political use licence”. Not only that, he also told Scorpio Music to back away from any legal action.
And, he admits, Trump’s use of ‘YMCA’ has actually been good for business. “The song finally made it to number one on a Billboard chart after over 45 years due to the President Elect’s use”, he writes, before adding, “the financial benefits have been great as well, as ‘YMCA’ is estimated to gross several million dollars since the President Elect’s continued use of the song”.
With all that in mind, he concludes, “I’m glad I allowed the President Elect’s continued use of ‘YMCA’. And I thank him for choosing to use my song”. Now Willis just wants everyone to stop calling the track a ‘gay anthem’, except those in the gay community that have made it their anthem.
Not had enough YMCA for one day? Watch a Finnish parody performance of the song from 1979.
