From Mark Zuckerberg to Jack Smith to Senate Republicans, everywhere you look these days there’s someone giving up and doing exactly what Donald Trump wants. Now you can add the Village People to the list. While the group once sent Trump a cease-and-desist letter demanding that he stop using their music, now they have agreed to play his second inauguration.
Victor Willis, the band’s lead singer, announced in a Facebook post on Monday that the group has “accepted an invitation from President Elect Trump’s campaign to participate in inaugural activities, including at least one event with President Elect Trump.” (While the Trump team struggled to book big acts in 2016, country star Carrie Underwood and classical singer Christopher Macchio will also perform next week.)
Trump is famously a huge fan of the Village People’s disco hits, particularly “Y.M.C.A.” The song is a staple at his rallies, and he has said he loves to play it during his amateur DJ sets at Mar-a-Lago because it “gets them moving.” The song is the preferred accompaniment for his iconic “Trump dance” (though neither he nor Melania do the classic letter-shaped moves).
The Village People have a confusing relationship with Trump. Willis initially asked Trump to stop using their music amid the protests against racial injustice in June 2020. A few months later, Willis told Bloomberg that he’d sue “simply out of spite” if he were a “Trump hater,” but he wasn’t going down that path. (Though he did complain that Trump “should at least do the ‘YMCA’ dance” properly.)
The Village People reversed course in 2023. Karen Willis, Victor’s wife and the band’s manager, sent Trump a cease-and-desist letter, saying regularly having Village People impersonators perform at Mar-a-Lago left people with the false impression that he had the group’s endorsement.
During the 2024 election, Willis expressed support for Kamala Harris — but in a series of Facebook posts he celebrated “Y.M.C.A.’”s Trump-fueled success as the song climbed to No. 1. In a lengthy post on December 2, Willis said he was fine with Trump campaign using his songs because it “obtained a political use license from BMI,” and it was clear Trump loved the music:
… 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.
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. So I told my wife to inform BMI to not withdraw the Trump campaign political use license.
Another factor: the “financial benefits” from Trump making “Y.M.C.A.” a hit again:
The financial benefits have been great as well as Y.M.C.A. is estimated to gross several million dollars since the President Elect’s continued use of the song. 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.
(Willis went on to insist that the song is “not really a gay anthem” and did not address Trump recently describing it as such.)
In this week’s announcement, Willis said the band knows some fans will be unhappy about their decision to play Trump’s inauguration, but they believe in the healing powers of their ode to hanging out with all the boys (in a not-gay way).
“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,” the statement read.
“Y.M.C.A.” is undeniably a banger. But is it the one force strong enough to heal all Americans, regardless of their political or sexual orientation? Guess we’ll find out on January 20.
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