How Donald Trump’s Obsession With “Y.M.C.A.” Broke Down the Village People

In October 2020, a freshly COVID-free Donald Trump hoisted his fists into the air, reveling in his recovery onstage at a Florida political rally as the Village People’s 1978 hit “Y.M.C.A.” played to a sea of red hats.

Though it was a celebratory moment for Trump, his mid-pandemic moves were criticized by some—including CNN’s Don Lemon, who said, “No matter how many times he goes to rallies and dances to the Village People…. He is having fun and dancing on the graves of 215,000 Americans. Dancing.”

Trump’s moves were also a middle finger of sorts to the Village People. The group has had varying responses to Trump’s use of the song over the years. “Our music is all-inclusive and certainly everyone is entitled to do the ‘Y.M.C.A.’ dance, regardless of their political affiliation,” the band initially wrote on Facebook in February 2020—but also added, “We’d prefer our music be kept out of politics.” By June, Victor Willis, one of the group’s original members, had reversed course, writing that after Trump threatened to use military force to stop protests after the police killing of George Floyd, he could “no longer look the other way.”

But like other former Trump detractors, including his own VP, the Village People has since acquiesced to the president-elect’s pull—even Willis. The group announced in a recent Facebook post that it will perform at Trump’s upcoming second inauguration. (Others on the lineup include country star Carrie Underwood and a classical singer you’ve definitely heard of named Christopher Macchio.)

“We know this won’t make some of you happy to hear, however we believe that music is to be performed without regard to politics,” read the statement. “Our song ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost. Therefore, we believe it’s now time to bring the country together with music.”

Willis himself soft-launched this pivot this past December, telling Fox News, “If you were to ask me today if the Village People would perform at the inauguration, I would probably say not because we’d be concerned about endorsement.” But then he added, “However, because the president-elect has done so much for ‘Y.M.C.A.’ and brought so much joy to so many people…if he were to ask the Village People to perform the song live for him, we’d have to seriously consider it.”

Trump, known to have a penchant for dated pop culture references, is a longtime devotee of the Village People. And even before his post-COVID bop to “Y.M.C.A.,” the song had been a staple at Trump’s rallies. He played it during the bizarre 40-minute jam session that ended a town hall in Pennsylvania this past fall; a week earlier, the song even rang out at an event commemorating the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Weirdly enough, whether Trump is grooving to the track alongside Elon Musk at Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve at Mar-a-Lago or via dance montage at the Republican National Convention, he never performs the dance that goes along with it, neglecting to contort his arms into the shape of the letters Y, M, C, and A. Instead, he’s deployed his widely imitated “Trump dance,” which is basically a dinosaur-arm shimmy. (Allow Trump’s granddaughter Kai to demonstrate from a private jet.)

“You know what gets ’em rockin’? ‘Y.M.C.A.,’” Trump said on a podcast in 2022. “‘YMCA,’ the gay national anthem. Did you ever hear that? ‘Y.M.C.A.’ gets people up and it gets them moving.”

The Village People and “Y.M.C.A.,” a song from the group’s third studio album, Cruisin’, have long had ties to queer culture for obvious reasons. But even that history has become a point of contention since Trump began embracing the track. In December, Willis claimed on Facebook that calling “Y.M.C.A.” a gay anthem is “a false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner [Jacques Morali, who died in 1991] was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay, and that the first Village People album was totally about gay life.” Apparently you can’t do whatever you feel with “Y.M.C.A.”—according to Willis, it’s regarded as a gay anthem only “to shame the president-elect’s use of the song.”

“Get your minds out of the gutter,” he added.

In the same post, Willis defended his decision to permit Trump’s use of his music after his wife and the group’s manager, Karen Willis, previously sent Trump a cease-and-desist letter stating that having Village People impersonators perform “Macho Man” at Mar-a-Lago gave people the false idea that Trump had the group’s support. What changed his mind? “I said to my wife one day, ‘Hey, “Trump” seems to genuinely like “Y.M.C.A.” and he’s having a lot of fun with it,’” wrote Willis. “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.”

For the record, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina was not impressed by that cease and desist. “I will only deal with the attorney of the Village People, if they have one, not the wife of one of the members,” he told TMZ in May 2023. He added that the members of the band “should be thankful that President Trump allowed them to get their name back in the press. I haven’t heard their name in decades. Glad to hear they are still around.”

As it turns out, the Trump camp wasn’t totally off in its assessment. Willis has admitted to benefitting financially from Trump’s love of the song, which contributed to “Y.M.C.A.” climbing to number one on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart. “‘Y.M.C.A.’ is estimated to gross several million dollars since the president-elect’s continued use of the song,” Willis wrote in that December Facebook post. “Therefore, I’m glad I allowed the president-elect’s continued use of ‘Y.M.C.A.’ And I thank him for choosing to use my song.”

That’s a pretty stark change of tune for the Village People, who dunked on Trump for playing “Y.M.C.A.” in 2021 after he made remarks at a Maryland Army base ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration. As the band told TMZ at the time, “Thankfully [Trump’s] now out of office, so it would seem his abusive use of our music has finally ended.”

Four years later, the Village People will be giving Trump a live show at his second inauguration. It’s surreal, hypocritical, and evidence of how much the president-elect can wear down someone’s resistance. “At one point I thought he’d tire of the song,” Willis told NBC News. “But that never happened.”