Victor Willis, one of the members of the group Village People, has endorsed President-elect Donald Trump’s public use of the song “Y.M.C.A.,” saying it has brought him great “financial benefits” and threatening to sue news outlets that refer to the song as a “gay anthem.”
In a lengthy post on Facebook on Monday, Willis, who co-wrote the hit 1978 song, explained that he changed his mind about Trump’s use of the song after realizing that Trump “seems to genuinely like Y.M.C.A. and he’s having a lot of fun with it.”
“As such, I simply didn’t have the heart to prevent his continued use of my song in the face of so many artists withdrawing his use of their material,” Willis wrote. Trump has faced legal action from multiple artists over his campaign’s use of songs. Village People’s manager was among those who sent a cease-and-desist letter last year to try to stop him from using the band’s songs at public events.
Willis acknowledged that the song has “benefited greatly” from Trump’s use, including pushing the song to the top of a Billboard chart and leading to an estimated gross of “several million dollars since the President Elect’s continued use of the song.”
The Trump campaign has repeatedly used the song at its rallies, often with Trump himself dancing along to it onstage. More recently, his awkward dance moves have inspired something of a still-more awkward trend, with his supporters and even professional athletes imitating them.
Since the song’s release decades ago, gay communities across the country have embraced “Y.M.C.A.” as one of their unofficial anthems. In an essay for the Library of Congress, Josiah Howard wrote: ‘Y.M.C.A.’ was more than a hit record, it was a cultural milestone: a world anthem built on, for, and about gay life and sensibilities that was, nevertheless, fully embraced by mainstream audiences. More than 40 years after its release it remains the go-to party record: the first festive stop for teenagers, grandmas, children, heads of state and, yes, even construction workers!
But Willis has long denied that the song is a gay anthem, and he reiterated that stance in his post Monday. He suggested that people have been “attempting to brand the song” as such to embarrass Trump by association, and Willis threatened to sue “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” starting in January 2025. “However,” Willis added, “I don’t mind that gays think of the song as their anthem.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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