Vil­lage Peo­ple Founder Talks Pos­si­bil­i­ty Of Per­form­ing ‘Y.M.C.A.’ At Inau­gu­ra­tion

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A founder of the music group the Vil­lage Peo­ple, Vic­tor Willis, talked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of per­form­ing the “Y.M.C.A.” at Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion.

Dur­ing his appear­ance on “Fox & Friends First” on Thurs­day, Willis reflect­ed on how Trump danced to the 1978 hit at his cam­paign ral­lies, which led sup­port­ers to make videos of them­selves doing the dance, mak­ing it become a viral sen­sa­tion that oth­ers, includ­ing famous ath­letes, have joined in doing at sport­ing events.

Willis, who co-wrote the dis­co song, admit­ted that after Trump made the 70s song shoot to the top of the Bill­board charts, 46 years lat­er, band mem­bers would have to con­sid­er per­form­ing it live for him, after rec­og­niz­ing that “the finan­cial ben­e­fits have been great.”

“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,” Willis said.

“But how­ev­er … because the pres­i­dent-elect has done so much for ‘Y.M.C.A.’ and brought so much joy to so many peo­ple, the song has actu­al­ly gone back to No. 1, and it’s still No. 1 today, so if he were to ask the Vil­lage Peo­ple to per­form the song live for him, we’d have to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er it,” he added.

The found­ing mem­ber also reflect­ed on how he end­ed up hav­ing a change of heart about Trump using the song, after ini­tial­ly con­demn­ing the use at past ral­lies start­ing in 2020.

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“I decid­ed to allow the president-elect’s con­tin­ued use of ‘Y.M.C.A.’ because he seems to gen­uine­ly, gen­uine­ly like the song and so many oth­er artists were stop­ping him from using their music,” Willis said.

“So I decid­ed to con­tact BMI [Broad­cast Music, Inc.] and told them not to ter­mi­nate his polit­i­cal use license because he seemed to be bring­ing so much joy to the Amer­i­can peo­ple with his use of Y.M.C.A.,” he added.

Willis recent­ly hit back at the claim that the tune was some kind of “gay anthem,” as The Dai­ly Wire pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. In a lengthy Face­book post, the founder of the group explained that the pop­u­lar song was based on his per­cep­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion, say­ing he “knew noth­ing about the Y being a hang out for gays.” Y.M.C.A. is an acronym for the Young Men’s Chris­t­ian Asso­ci­a­tion non­prof­it.

“When I say, ‘hang out with all the boys’ that is sim­ply 1970s black slang for black guys hang­ing-out togeth­er for sports, gam­bling or what­ev­er. There’s noth­ing gay about that,” the singer said of the lyrics.

Aman­da Hard­ing con­tributed to this piece.

Relat­ed: Vil­lage Peo­ple Found­ing Mem­ber Defends Trump Using ‘Y.M.C.A.’, Says It’s ‘Not Real­ly A Gay Anthem’