US election: Trump campaign faces legal action for using YMCA

Lawyers will file a complaint ‘in the next few days’ over the unauthorised use of a Village People hit.

The Village People on Countdown during their heyday.

Lawyers will file a complaint “in the next few days” over the unauthorised use of the Village People hit YMCA at campaign rallies for US Donald Trump.

The 1978 disco anthem was used both at rallies and as the soundtrack to a campaign video ahead of the presidential election.

The rights holders, including Scorpio Music “have discovered with amazement this misappropriation, moreover for partisan and electoral purposes for the benefit of Donald Trump, which they would never have accepted,” said lawyer Richard Malka on Friday.

The unauthorised use of the song will “be the subject of a complaint in the next few days, both in France and in the United States, against any initiator or accomplice of what constitutes outright theft of the property of others ”, he said.

The YMCA song was penned by French writers Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo and Village People lead singer Victor Willis.

The Village People had hits on both sides of the Atlantic with YMCA as well as In the Navy and Macho Man in the late 1970s. They became standard bearers for the gay community.

AFP