Trump’s Village People ties deepen as Y.M.C.A. controversy grows

The Village People performed “Y.M.C.A.” at Donald Trump’s pre-inauguration victory rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 19, 2025, one day before his second inauguration. The appearance folded a 1978 disco hit that had long outgrown its original setting into the center of Trump’s political identity.

Trump has tried to present that relationship as settled. On social media, he said Victor Willis, the Village People’s co-founder and lead singer, was with him “right from the beginning.” The record is more complicated. Willis and producer Jacques Morali wrote “Y.M.C.A.” for the album Cruisin’, and the song became one of the group’s signature hits before it was embraced by the LGBTQ community and added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2020.

Willis later moved to defend Trump’s use of the song. In December 2024, he said Trump had obtained a political-use license through BMI and argued that “Y.M.C.A.” was not intended as a “gay anthem.” He threatened legal action against media outlets that continued to describe it that way. Willis also said he had initially objected in earlier years because of the political climate and complaints from fans, but later concluded that Trump was genuinely enjoying the song and that the exposure had helped its popularity.

The dispute has turned “Y.M.C.A.” into a case study in how a pop song’s public meaning can be overtaken by political branding. What began as a Village People release in 1978 now functions as a rally cue tied to Trump’s campaigns, even as the song’s writer has tried to redraw its meaning and defend the president’s use of it.

That tension is built into the song’s modern history. The Library of Congress’s 2020 registry inclusion confirmed its cultural weight far beyond disco, while Trump’s rally staging pushed it into an even more durable political role. Willis’s shifting response, from objection to defense, has done little to loosen that connection.