So Y.M.C.A. is not a gay anthem? You could have fooled us queer folk

I risk being sued, apparently, for suggesting that a famous song I’ve long heard in gay clubs in Australia and worldwide – Y.M.C.A. – is a gay anthem. If I dare to claim that it is, my mind must be in the gutter, according to the song’s co-writer and lead singer, Victor Willis of Village People. My mind and all my gay friends’ minds and all our straight friends’ minds, for that matter.

For decades, I’ve danced to Y.M.C.A. while gesticulating to spell out its title (when in a good mood) or rolling my eyes at its cliched camp cheesiness (when more cynical).

Village People on the street, though not in the gutter, in 1980. Credit: EMI

My eyes certainly rolled when I saw that Donald Trump, during his election campaign, had co-opted this 1978 smash hit, then desecrated it with his cringeworthy dad dance moves, bereft of rhythm, flair or the traditional letter-spelling choreography. It felt twisted; a long-standing ornament of gay culture had been misappropriated by someone who represented the kind of toxic masculinity that many in my LGBTQI community found deplorable.

This week, it was confirmed that the group will perform at Trump’s inaugural balls and at an inauguration eve rally in Washington, D.C., this month. For years, Willis had demanded that Trump stop using it for his political campaigns. Suddenly, 46 years after its release, Willis – a registered Democrat who voted for Kamala Harris – has changed his tune.

Willis told Fox & Friends First last month: “If you were to ask me today if Village People would perform at the inauguration, I would probably say no because we’d be concerned about endorsement [of Trump].

“However, because the president-elect has done so much for Y.M.C.A. and brought so much joy to so many people, the song has actually gone back to No.1 [in sales] … so if he were to ask Village People to perform the song live for him, we’d have to seriously consider it.”

Donald Trump on the campaign trail with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who knew the Y.M.C.A. moves. Credit: AP

Willis adds that “the financial benefits have been great”. Sales of Y.M.C.A. spurred by Trump’s campaigning, he says, amount to “several million dollars”. So Willis is grateful. As he might be.

But he’s gone much further. He’s threatened to sue any news outlet that suggests the song is what we all know it to be: a gay anthem. Willis claimed on Facebook that this was a “false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay”. And, yes, he wants us all to get our “minds out of the gutter”.

“Come January 2025,” Willis wrote, “my wife will start suing each and every news organisation that falsely refers to YMCA … [as] somehow a gay anthem because such [a] notion is based solely on the song’s lyrics alluding to elicit [sic] activity for which it does not.”

Those lyrics and their allusions sure fooled us gay folk: You can hang out with all the boys … do whatever you feel … because no man does it all by himself.

It’s a camp classic. Village People celebrated and commodified gay stereotypes with their costumes – a leather-clad biker, a construction worker – and profited from the gay subcultures they represented. Y.M.C.A. brought together people, queer and straight, from weddings to the pop-music gay club, Palms on Oxford, on Sydney’s Oxford Street.

Now, it’s been hijacked by a political movement that’s sown division and ridiculed LGBTQI people to win votes. That movement wrestled away the anthem from the very people it sought to alienate, the gay community that helped make the song iconic. It made my toes curl.

Willis probably didn’t see the headlines in 2015, when Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front used Jimmy Barnes’ songs to promote their anti-Muslim and anti-immigration agenda. Barnes robustly distanced himself from those campaigns, pointing out his own family was multicultural and that Australia was “made stronger by the diversity of its people”.

The Trump campaign obtained a political-use licence to use Y.M.C.A. from BMI, the world’s leading performing rights organisation, so it had every right to it. Willis initially asked BMI to terminate that licence, but then the song roared back into the Billboard charts, so he terminated his termination request. Trump, after all, “seemed to be bringing so much joy to the American people” with his tune.

MAGA supporters are thrilled by this legal threat. “It’s not a gay anthem, and there’s nothing wrong with you pulling away from that violent crowd,” one wrote below Willis’ post. Another claimed it was now America’s “second national anthem”.

It’s a deliberate dilution of gay history and culture, and supposed lovers of freedom of speech are applauding an overreaching defamation threat and attempt at censorship.

Y.M.C.A. was an anthem played in spaces where queer people found safety, empowerment and joy. Now, it’s echoing across rallies held by the political movement of a strongman who’s been disdainful of difference. I’d rather not hang out with those boys.

Gary Nunn is an author and journalist.