VILLAGE PEOPLE – "Y.M.C.A."

At the time, I disliked this song. Corny disco? Yup. On principle.

I was wrong.

Although, even I could see that Victor Willis was one hell of a soul voice.

So, how did it reverberate in the still largely homophobic mainstream culture? Actually, nobody cared! It was that good an ‘everybody join in’ song. Was this the first ‘gay’ song that celebrated, explicitly? Up to now, it had all been either ‘camp’ John Inman type things, or ‘sympathetic’ songs like “Under one roof” where someone dies in the end. A bit like how gay people were dealt with in movies in times past.

This was as much a turning point as “Anarchy” was, in it’s way.

Right, I’m off to make way for much longer and more incisive analysis from the likes of…….

Before I get started, let’s celebrate 1979 getting started – in Popular terms totally and absolutely my favourite year, and with maybe only three exceptions I’d be inclined to give every entry in this year a 9 or a 10. There are undoubtedly “better” years in general but none reflects the greatness better or more accurately in terms of what got to number one.

In my opinion.

Right – “Y.M.C.A.” Imagine the young Jimmy Somerville we see in the video to “Smalltown Boy”; dejectedly leaving a Glasgow and a family which doesn’t, can’t and won’t understand the way he feels and the way he is, making his way down to London. He already knows that the transition will not be glamorous; he has to sign on, gets attacked in the street, but eventually comes into contact with new friends, new alliances are made, he joins and blends into a sympathetic community. But all the while, playing inside his head, is a glamorous MGM red carpet of a musical setpiece; singers and dancers welcoming him as he emerges from Euston Station, dressed in costumes representing every possible way of life.

The Village People may not have been Londoners – and their writer and producer Jacques Morali even less so – but that’s the vision I see in “Y.M.C.A.,” a tickertape parade embracing the young dispossessed, and the first unambiguously gay number one single. The key line “You can hang out with all the boys” may have been filed next to John Inman and Kenneth Williams by our parents, but there was no doubt about what it meant, nor the very palpable subtext of such lines as “young man, what do you want to be?” or “No man does it all by himself.”

The group had already scored heavily at club level with similar beefy cheerleading anthems such as “Macho Man” and “San Francisco” but the jauntily proud “Y.M.C.A.” was their breakthrough gesture. It’s probably no accident that lead singer Victor Willis was so vocally reminiscent of Levi Stubbs; for they restored an exuberance and brassy boldness that for the most part had been absent from the upmarket work of ‘70s Motown and Philly. The beat is upfront and solidly foursquare in a way which directly predicates Hi-NRG and House; the brass take no quarters in their high-C trumpet fanfares; and the whole spectacle is marvellously subversive, taking the model of the Young Men’s Christian Association and turning its intended morals against it… “You can do whatever you feel.” Yet the model of the Good Samaritan is preserved intact and brilliantly spruced up to fit the mood of its times; note the compassion and lightness inherent in the couplet “I felt no man cared if I were alive/I felt the whole world was so jive.” And then the quintuplets of brass blasts herald yet another handclapping, flag-waving chorus, and we realise what a major turning point “Y.M.C.A.” represents; no more shame or guilt, fuck the homophobia and racism which lay behind the wretched Disco Sucks “movement,” fuck even the gloomy pity of Aznavour’s “What Makes A Man?” (though never forget its message) – the record was not entitled “Say It Loud, We’re Gay And We’re Proud,” but that was surely what it said; the fact that millions of hen nights and provincial ‘70s clubs continue gladly to orbit their handbags around its friendly commandments emphasises its glorious subversiveness. After that, the Village People had no real option but to continue with minor variants on the same theme – “In The Navy,” “Go West” – and their time was necessarily brief. But consider the work of dual genius which is the Pet Shop Boys’ 1993 recording of “Go West,” a performance great because it works on two distinct and separate levels; firstly, as a satire on the post-Glasnost Americanisation of Russia, and secondly as something of a hymn of renewed pride and defiance for the post-Aids age. Yes, pride and defiance – I can go for that.

That B-side, ‘The Women’! How does that go, then? How does the Village People worldview represent these women? I’m intrigued.

When – aged six – I saw the YMCA in Watford, I thought it must have been where the video was filmed. This is a gigantic tune, pointless to resist.

Re: #2 – playing records to kids and gauging their reactions? Whoda thunk it?

I was always very good at the dance! OK let’s see if I can remember them all without looking. Policeman, Native American, Leather dude, Cowboy, errrr Army dude I think, and one more? BUILDER, of course! *slaps forehead* They should have swapped Army dude for Spaceman I think.

As a closeted and terrified gay 16-year old at the time, I wish I could say that “YMCA” opened the doors and showed me the way – but alas, that was far from the case. For even though I fancied the ripped jeans off the cowboy and the construction worker, all I saw were a bunch of new – if radically improved – archetypes to place alongside Messrs Inman and Grayson, with whom they shared a similar line in cheeky, saucy innuendo – “hang out with all the boys”, indeed!

But where Johnny and Larry remained mired in sexless self-mockery, the Village People exuded an unambigous sexuality – albeit a cartoonish version thereof, which somehow neutralised most of the threat. Except to the likes of me, who felt as alienated by their thrusting, moustachioed in-your-faceness as I had by Inman’s and Grayson’s mincing, neutered outrageousness. For if the gay world really was full of randy leathermen and horny cowboys, perpetually locked into an aggressively single-minded pursuit of instant sexual gratification – the very antithesis of the gentle soul-to-soul romanticism for which I yearned – then this merely confirmed my alienation and isolation. Oh, I might have been attracted to members of my own sex, but if the Village People were any sort of representative of gay people, then I most certainly wasn’t One Of Them.

So much for the angst. All that aside, I loved “YMCA” as a piece of clever, witty, original, infectious disco-pop, which broke with the formula and offered something sonically and rhythmically fresh to my ears (my favourite section being the five blaring brass stabs which precede the chorus, tailor-made for punching your right thumb behind your right shoulder like a camp hitch-hiker). And I loved the video, featuring the VPs lined up on the top of a NYC skyscraper like the Stylistics in 1975, whose unapologetically joyous, life-affirming exuberance smothered all mockery at birth.

As for That Dance, I don’t remember anyone doing the Y-M-C-A hand movements until well into the 1980s, and I certainly don’t remember the movements originating from within the VP camp. Where did it all spring from?

as well as victor willis sounding like levi stubbs (djp #3) this has also always reminded my of the four tops because of the way those brass stabs mask an awkward transition from verse to chorus in the same way they do in ‘reach out i’ll be there’.

um, i hope that mashup wasn’t trying to make the point i fear it was….

I loved this too, though now it’s so covered in layers of kitsch nostalgia it’s hard to enjoy as simply as before. To be honest, I didn’t get the gay subtext at all until “In the Navy”

I always thought of Pet Shop Boys’ “Go West” as being incredibly sad, an elegy for the optimism and freedom of the pre-AIDS era of sexual liberation. But Neil Tennant makes everything sound sad anyway.

I was only vaguely aware of the “Disco Sucks” movement – I saw clips of the event in Chicago which always struck me as uncomfortably close to similar events burning Beatles records or even Jewish books – but I was generally of the opinion that disco sucked. There was nothing homophobic or particularly racist about my viewpoint – some of the worst disco was made by white people who for all I knew were straight, not that that was an issue to me – just that so much of it was tacky, repetitive and boring (as is a lot of dance music today). But there was always stuff that stood out as being simply great music, and this is a prime example.

It’s not just the sheer style and exuberance, not just the brass sound, not just a great lyric – it’s the joy on the faces of the performers, the espression particularly on Randy Jones (cowboy)’s face which says, oh my God I can’t believe we’re having so much fun and getting away with it. Irresistible. Mind you the dance – Mike, it must have been a British thing, there’s nothing like it on the video – is totally naff.

Five years later my then girlfriend was utterly dumbfounded to find out it was a gay anthem!

It’s been a while since I heard it but IIRC theirs is a far more palatable take than, say, Patrick Cargill’s song “Women.”

DJP #3 – interesting idea about Jimmy Somerville or someone like him taking “YMCA” as an invite/welcome to London. Imagine if the message had been more like the Pogues’ “The Old Main Drag”.

i am intrigued by the b-side: what is the VP take on “the women”?

Will check my copy this evening, but I think the twist is that all the women they name-check are gay icons…

… amd the protagonist in the Jam’s “Strange Town” had just arrived in London and was trying to find the clubs and YMCAs at around the same time.

Oddly enough, I see quite a few 8s and 9s coming up in 1979 but nothing that’s a 10 for me. I concur that it’s a great year, really the beginning of my last big fling with pop because starting this year and for the four years that follow it’s an exciting and interesting time for me. In many ways the best and worst years of my life.

I can also see a couple of things I loathe and I know I’m going to be out of step with others when we get there. Still, that is all part of life’s rich tapestry and I’m no teenager but an aging, harassed and careworn schoolteacher on the brink of disillusionment.

Oh, YMCA. Well, it’s a classic, innit. One that encompasses everybody and leaks across all kinds of cultural boundaries. Not breathtakingly original but a real feel-good sound. What’s not to like about it?

We should do more on B-sides!

(Yes, I am champing at the bit…)

is there anything “coded gay” you do think is representative of you, lex? (if that’s not too cheeky a question)

i think the transformation over 40-odd years of pretty much the totality of gay life does mean that its signal moments further back along the arc seem much more dated than lots of other things of similar vintage — i wonder also if i don’t feel this way about a lot of punk stuff, which is that it meant everything to me then but now sometimes feels like it’s trying to hold me back in exactly the place it claimed to be setting me free from (or something like that)

(when was the last time anyone saw the “clone” look on the actual real street?)

The semaphore dance shows up in the YMCA sequence of Can’t Stop the Music, if I remember right.

According to both Wikipedia and Pete Silverton’s detailed and well-researched 1998 Mojo feature on the band (God, I am loving my Rock’s Back Pages subscription), the YMCA dance originated with the band members themselves (i.e. in a rare moment of creative autonomy!), and was first seen on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in early 1979. So there you go.

I remember B.A. Robertson’s comment when guest presenting “Top of the Pops” and the Village People video was shown. As it ended he claimed “I’m glad I don’t live in their village” . I was only 13 at the time so don’t really relate it to anything gay and when I bought the record, nobody at school made any comment. I guess we were just too young to understand.

“Maybe masked man he a poofter, try it on with sturdy Tonto..”

Originally released in 1976 so YMCA didn’t feature the first gay red… sorry Native American Indian.

Mike–

As far as I’m concerned, the queerest ever (almost) number one has to be the Pet Shop Boys and Dusty’s “What Have I Done to Deserve This.” Some might find the sexuality angle quite ambiguous–but it’s always been pretty clear to me.

Re 43: Another of those lyrics that passed me by at the time – so, Lone Ranger pre-dates YMCA as a gay hit that doesn’t end in tears.

Must say I thought this was well naff at the time. After all the effusive praise I feel quite apologetic. Undeniably jolly, but so is Winchester Cathedral.

Lex at #46: “I tend to code gay via diva-appreciation”

…as indeed did most of the visible urban gay community in the late 1970s (and forever thereafter of course, but it’s a phenomenon which arguably peaked during the disco boom, and again to a lesser extent during the circuit party era of the early-to-mid 1990s).