President Trump boasted on Wednesday that he made \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d \u201ca \u2018monster\u2019 hit\u201d again, decades after its 1978 release, in a social media post that expressed condolences after the death of Victor Willis, the Village People\u2019s lead singer.<\/p>\n
He offered his highest compliment: \u201cVictor and the group was there for us right from the beginning!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump has a decidedly uncomplicated devotion to the Village People\u2019s disco-pop hit \u201cY.M.C.A,\u201d at times thought of as a gay anthem but now perhaps most often heard as the unofficial soundtrack to the president\u2019s fist-pumping dance at rallies.<\/p>\n
He seemed to view his relationship with the music group as similarly uncomplicated, according to his post celebrating Mr. Willis, who died on Monday at 74<\/a>. \u201cHe was a great and happy guy who loved that I used his groups song, YMCA, at my Rallies,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote.<\/p>\n But Mr. Willis and the Village People have not necessarily been enthusiastic about the song\u2019s feature spot on the soundtrack of Trump rallies and Mar-a-Lago fund-raisers.<\/p>\n The group in 2020 responded to fans who had been pressuring it to stop letting Mr. Trump play \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d by saying it preferred that its music be \u201ckept out of politics<\/a>,\u201d even though it said Mr. Trump\u2019s use of the song was legal.<\/p>\n Later that year, as protests over the police killing of George Floyd grew, Mr. Willis, who co-wrote \u201cY.M.C.A,\u201d criticized Mr. Trump for proposing to deploy the U.S. military to American cities in response to demonstrations. He told the president to stop using his songs.<\/p>\n \u201cSorry, but I can no longer look the other way,\u201d Mr. Willis wrote on Facebook.<\/a><\/p>\n Three years later, the group sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mr. Trump over a video of him dancing to a tribute band playing \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d Karen Huff-Willis, Mr. Willis\u2019s wife and the group\u2019s manager, said the video made it appear that the real musical act had endorsed him.<\/p>\n But not long after, Mr. Willis seemed to come around to the use of the song, if not to Mr. Trump himself.<\/p>\n He told Billboard magazine in 2024 that he could ask his music licensing agency to revoke Mr. Trump\u2019s political-use license for \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d but said that he would not, because Mr. Trump\u2019s use \u201cgreatly benefited\u201d<\/a> the song. He said the constant use had sent it to the top of the charts. Still, he posted on social media that year that he was a registered Democrat who preferred Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential contest.<\/p>\n The Village People also performed at an event for Mr. Trump\u2019s second inauguration<\/a>, though Mr. Willis said it was not an endorsement of his policies. They danced on a stage flanking Mr. Trump, who pumped his fists and jutted his hips to the beat as the crowd waved \u201c47\u201d signs, for the new 47th president.<\/p>\n But this May, when the Village People traveled to India to serenade one of Mr. Trump\u2019s closest advisers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for an official birthday cake-cutting, it seemed beyond doubt that the song was synonymous with not just Mr. Trump\u2019s image but also his presidency.<\/p>\n The sexual undertones of songs like \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d and \u201cMacho Man\u201d have never seemed to bother Mr. Trump, who is known for his infatuation with the 1980s<\/a> and that era of music.<\/p>\n Written by Mr. Willis and a gay French producer, Jacques Morali, \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d was released when disco was the soundtrack for L.G.B.T.Q. dance clubs. It was Mr. Morali\u2019s idea to \u201ccreate an act made up of amusingly dressed homosexual stereotypes, to write disco songs spoofing homosexual fantasies, and then to package the whole enterprise with plenty of nonthreatening good cheer to middle America,\u201d the critic John Rockwell wrote in The New York Times<\/a> the year after \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d was released.<\/p>\n