It’s one of the most recognizable songs in pop music history. Whether you’re at a wedding reception, baseball game, or throwback dance party, those pulsing disco beats and arm-waving dance moves are instantly familiar. We’re talking, of course, about the Village People’s 1978 classic “YMCA”. But behind this feel-good party anthem lies a strange, contested history involving gay subcultures, copyright battles, and an unlikely new chapter: its emergence as a MAGA campaign song.
From the Gay Clubs of Manhattan to the Mainstream
To understand the origins of “YMCA”, we have to go back to the thriving gay disco scene of 1970s New York City. In legendary clubs like the Loft and Paradise Garage, DJs were pioneering a new sound fusing four-on-the-floor beats with lush orchestration. It was here that French songwriting duo Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo found the inspiration for a campy boyband that would embody gay masculine fantasies.
The idea came to them one night while people-watching in Greenwich Village. As Belolo later recalled:
We saw a [Native American] walking down the street and we heard the bells he was carrying on his feet. We followed the man into the infamous BDSM sex club the Anvil, where they saw him get cruised by a dude in cowboy drag. “We said ‘My God, look at those characters.’ So we started to fantasize on what were the characters of America.
Henri Belolo
Assembling an ensemble of flamboyant masculine archetypes like the Leatherman, G.I., and Construction Worker, Morali and Belolo created the Village People. Their campy lyrics were filled with gay innuendo that largely went over mainstream audiences’ heads as they climbed the charts.
Not-So-Straight Subtext
With thumping beats and exuberant choruses ready-made for the dance floor, the Village People’s songs smuggled gay semiology into Middle America. Take the lyrics to “YMCA”:
You can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal
YMCA lyrics
You can do whatever you feel…
As scholar Nadine Hubbs notes, gay listeners picked up on the cruisy subtext of “hanging out with all the boys”, while straight audiences remained blissfully unaware. Other hits like “Macho Man” and “In the Navy” carried similar double meanings.
By 1980, the Village People were one of the biggest acts in the world, notching three top 20 hits and an iconic Rolling Stone cover. Their gayness hiding in plain sight, the group brought queer-coded disco into shopping malls and suburban living rooms.
An Unlikely Second Act
Fast forward a few decades, and “YMCA” found a surprising new audience: sports fans. After the New York Yankees began blasting the song during games in the 1990s, it caught on at stadiums across the country.
As the gay subtexts faded from cultural memory, “YMCA” was reborn as a wholesome jock jam. “A rallying song for the oppressed turns into a middle-of-the-road spirit-lifter,” nightlife reporter Michael Musto observed, “mainly because the straights like to steal things from the gays, take away all the scary edge, and make it their own.”
From the Ballpark to the Campaign Trail
The latest chapter in the bizarre journey of “YMCA” has been its embrace by former President Donald Trump. He began playing the song at rallies in 2018, making it a staple of his campaign events and even dancing to it on stage.
This caused a rift between the two key stakeholders of the Village People’s legacy. Original lead singer Victor Willis, who secured the copyright to “YMCA” after a long legal battle, gave Trump his blessing to use it. But the group’s current touring lineup, which includes original member Felipe Rose, released a statement condemning the song’s partisan appropriation.
It all reached a surreal peak when Willis’s contingent of the Village People performed “YMCA” at a Trump inaugural ball, while the other members spoke out in protest. As the president’s anti-LGBTQ policies rolled out, the song’s recontextualization from gay anthem to MAGA soundtrack became a disturbing metaphor.
The Importance of Owning Queer History
This tug-of-war over the meaning and usage of “YMCA” points to the importance of preserving queer cultural legacies. As Professor Hubbs argues, political factions often try to “weaken our shared reality and confuse understandings”. Holding fast to the true history of the Village People means not allowing their radical roots to be erased.
So next time you find yourself on the dance floor, arms overhead, singing that familiar refrain, take a moment to appreciate the long, strange trip of this subversive disco smash. From gay underground to presidential galas, “YMCA” is a reflection of the complex, contested journey of LGBTQ expression in pop culture.
As the battle over what the song represents continues, one hopes its queer essence will survive. There’s a power in reclaiming these anthems as beacons of community and liberation, even as the winds of politics try to whisk them away. In the end, no presidential rally can strip “YMCA” of its fabulous, funky soul.
