"Y.M.C.A." - Village People

On Revisionist History

The story of how the mainstream co-opted a queer music producer’s plan to give gay culture its own supergroup.

I spend all my time on this Substack spotlighting the untold queer history of rock & roll. The response from readers is often, “Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know so-and-so was queer.” Or, “Wow! I’ve gained a new perspective on this artist.” Comments like these are to be expected about, let’s say, Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Dusty Springfield. Music journalists rarely even mention the queer side of their stories. But today’s featured band? C’mon. Everybody knows the Village People were specifically engineered to cater to queer audiences. Everybody knows that, right?

The Village People are famous for gay innuendo, barely masked by a facade of hyper-masculine characters. Yet, their pop culture status as both a gay icon and mainstream staple says a lot about how disco—and the queer culture in which it’s rooted—was admired, appropriated, and ultimately admonished by the masses.

Disco was born in queer spaces. The term is an abbreviation of the French word “discothèque,” which were European upscale dance venues that featured jazz, funk, and soul. The music genre emerged in the U.S. from underground house parties and bathhouses in New York City. In the book Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco, author Peter Shapiro points out that disco rose from the ashes of the Stonewall Riots in 1969. “Disco was the embodiment of the pleasure-is-politics ethos of a new generation of gay culture, a generation fed up with police raids, draconian laws and the darkness of the closet. That this new movement was born on the night of Judy Garland’s funeral couldn’t have been more appropriate.” 

With disco, the DJ became a rock star, and all the biggest names were queer. DJs like David Mancuso, Nicky Siano, Larry Levan, and Frankie Knuckles were at the helm of disco’s most popular underground queer venues, like the Continental Baths, The Loft, and Paradise Garage. These sanctuaries for marginalized people, particularly gay men, played music that embodied a sense of sexual liberation and unity. Mancuso created The Loft as an “invitation-only” house party, not because he wanted an elitist aura but to ensure safety for his patrons. Loft attendee and radio producer Mark Riley told NPR, "There were people I met at The Loft, gay, 18-19 years old, who had been thrown out of their houses by their parents, and had, literally, no place else to go. When David talked about social progress, that's what he was talking about, being able to give people a level of freedom they didn't have otherwise in their lives.”

DJs Larry Levan and David Mancuso with Herbie Hancock at Paradise Garage

Enter, The Village People. Formed in 1977 by queer French producer Jacques Morali, the group was like any boy-band: manufactured. Except this one was designed to capitalize on queer nightlife. 

“I think to myself that gay people have no group, nobody to personalize the gay people, you know?”

- Producer, Jacques Morali

Morali had already enjoyed a string of minor hits in Europe and moved to New York City in 1977 in an attempt to break into the American market. While attending a costume ball in Greenwich Village, he got inspired by the campy representation of American masculinity as “gay fantasy” drag — the cowboy, the biker, the construction worker, and so on. 

Morali had already written a few songs when he was given a demo tape recorded by the man who would one day claim ownership of the Village People, singer Victor Willis. According to a 1978 interview with Rolling Stone, Morali first hired Willis to sing background vocals but told him, "I had a dream that you sang lead on my album and it went very, very big."

In the book Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, author Alice Echols recalls that 1978 Rolling Stone interview, in which “Morali outed himself, and emphasized that as a homosexual he was committed to ending the cultural invisibility of gay men.” Morali’s intentions couldn’t be clearer. 

“I think to myself that gay people have no group,” he told Rolling Stone, “nobody to personalize the gay people, you know?”

Songwriters and session musicians were assembled to accompany Willis, who agreed to sing lead on the debut album, 1977’s Village People. As record sales poured in, Morali knew he needed more workers for his village. He placed an ad that read “Macho Types Wanted: Must Dance And Have A Moustache.” 

Randy Jones was hired as the “Cowboy,”  Felipe Rose as the (ahem, antiquated, racist language incoming) “Indian,” David Hodo as the “Construction Worker,” Glenn Hughes as the “Leatherman/Biker,” and Alex Briley as “Military Man.” Lead singer Willis donned a police uniform.

The Village People with Producer, Jacques Morali

The track list on that first album reads like a Damron Guide to America’s most popular queer destinations: The track "San Francisco (You’ve Got Me)" is a love letter to the liberated mecca for gay culture, with lyrics celebrating pleasure and freedom: “Love the way I please / don’t put no chains on me.” The song also references the “leather” subculture emerging then as part of the macho gay identity.

Another track, "Fire Island," gets its namesake from one of the most famous gay destinations on the planet. Known still today for its party atmosphere and cruising spots, Fire Island was a queer utopia in the 1970s. The song’s lyrics — “You never know just who you’ll meet / Maybe someone out of your wildest fantasies” — were an unmistakable nod to the island’s legendary hookup culture.

Finally, the song "Village People" on the debut album is a rallying cry for queer unity. The lyrics call on “the Village people”—a coded reference to the gay community in Greenwich Village—to take their place in the sun and be free. This wasn’t just camp or parody; it was a not-so-thinly veiled anthem of resistance and pride.

Mainstream Success: The Disco Takeover

Despite these queer roots, the Village People—and disco as a whole—soon found themselves co-opted by the mainstream. By the time the band’s second and third albums, Macho Man and Cruisin’, were released in 1978, disco had evolved from its queer underground into a commercial juggernaut. But crossover came with a cost. 

As straight audiences embraced disco, its queerness was increasingly pushed aside. Gay visibility, once the driver behind the Village People’s rise, became a secondary goal to generating mass appeal."Y.M.C.A." became a global hit, climbing the charts in 1979 and securing the Village People’s place in pop history. But as their music reached wider audiences, the songs’ queer subtext was either blissfully overlooked by straight audiences or deliberately erased. 

Even queer members of the band routinely and vehemently denied any queer connection. . In a 1979 interview with NME, the original “Cowboy,” Randy Jones, said, “Look, why is it you guys are so hung up with this gay thing! All we ever get from you guys is this ‘Are they or aren’t they?’ This band has never claimed to be a gay band.”

Jones later came out. So did Rose, who played the Native-American archetype.

Ask Jones today, and he says the queer vibe was always intentional. “I think people said, ‘Well, (shoot), I like YMCA, and maybe all gay people aren’t as bad as I thought. That’s one of the effects we had,” he told his hometown newspaper, the Raleigh News & Observer, in 2023. “We went into the heart of the American family with the sharpest scalpel in the drawer, we did a little incision over the hearts of the people watching us, and we pulled back the flap and put in a little compassion, a little understanding, something that would deescalate fear, and stitched it back up with tiny sutures.” 

Disco Backlash: The 'Disco Sucks' Movement

The 1979 Disco Demolition Night in Chicago was the breaking point. In what was billed as a publicity stunt by a rock radio station, thousands of disco records were gathered in a stadium and blown up, sparking a riot by tens of thousands of on-lookers longing to restore the dominance of “authentic” rock music — which had traditionally been associated with white, heterosexual masculinity.

That’s why the detonation wasn’t just a symbolic rejection of a genre; it was a rejection of the people disco represented. The rallying cry of “Disco Sucks!” was directed at its queer, Black, and Latinx originators.Disco’s rise meant marginalized people had created a space of their own, but once that space included mainstream audiences, the pendulum swung back with violent force. Backlash against disco wasn’t merely musical; it was cultural. 

So, where does that leave the Village People? Years later, straight lead singer Victor Willis won the sole rights to the Village People trademark after lengthy legal battles with his former bandmates and record company. Willis claimed in 2020 that the group’s most popular single, “Y.M.C.A.,” was not written as a tongue-in-cheek reference to gay cruising. Willis also claims to have written “100% of the lyrics,” so he should know. (Nevermind that the song comes from an album literally named Cruisin’.)

Willis, who is married to entertainment lawyer Karen Willis (and was briefly married to actress Phylicia Rashad from 1979 to1982), actually co-wrote “Y.M.C.A” with the group’s queer founder, Morali. In 2015, a federal court ruled that Willis and Morali were the sole writers of the group’s catalog. But Morali died in 1991.

That means the queer creator of the Village People is no longer alive to debate the merit of Willis’ claims. And the rest of the band (including out queer members Jones and Rose) are no longer legally allowed to even call themselves Village People anymore. 

It’s hard to deny the band’s contribution to gay visibility during a time when overtly queer representation in pop culture was rare. Songs like "In the Navy" and "Go West" may have pandered to a mainstream audience, but the early albums were bold in their celebration of gay life. 

The result is a complex legacy: one that is inseparable from both the joy and the exploitation of queer culture in the disco era.

Even the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame remembers Morali’s original vision.

If you find yourself remarking, “I didn’t know any of this,” please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. If you prefer a one time donation, you can buy me a taco here. YUM!

---