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“Y.M.C.A.” is a song by the American disco group Village People. It was released in 1978 as the only single from their third studio album, Cruisin’ (1978). The song was written by Jacques Morali (also the record’s producer) and singer Victor Willis. A medley with “Hot Cop” reached No. 2 on Billboard‘s Dance Music/Club Play Singles chart, while the song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in early 1979, placing behind both “Le Freak” by Chic and “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” by Rod Stewart. Outside the US, “Y.M.C.A.” reached No. 1 in the UK around the same time, becoming the group’s biggest hit. It is one of fewer than 40 singles to have sold 10 million (or more) physical copies worldwide.

The song remains popular and is played at many sporting events in the US and Europe, with crowds joining in on the dance in which arm movements are used to spell out the four letters of the song’s title. “Y.M.C.A.” appeared as the Space Shuttle wake-up call on day 11 of mission STS-106. In 2009, “Y.M.C.A.” set a Guinness World Record when over 44,000 people danced to Village People’s live performance of the song at the 2008 Sun Bowl game in El Paso, Texas.

“Y.M.C.A.” is #7 on VH1‘s list of “The 100 Greatest Dance Songs of the 20th Century.” In 2020, “Y.M.C.A” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. In its official press release, the Library noted that “back in its heyday, ‘Y.M.C.A.’ was a hit around the world, going to No. 1 on the charts in over 15 countries, and its ongoing popularity is evidence that, despite the naysayers, disco has never truly died.”

History[edit]

In the US, the YMCA began building single room occupancy (SRO) facilities in the 1880s to house people from rural areas who moved into cities to look for work. The typical YMCA SRO housing provides “low-income, temporary housing for a rent of $110 per week” (in 2005) for stays that are typically three to six months long. By 1950, 670 of the 1,688 YMCAs in the US provided SRO spaces, which made 66,959 beds available. By the 1970s, the typical YMCA tenants were more likely to be homeless people and youth facing life issues, rather than people migrating from rural areas.

Victor Willis, lead singer and lyricist, recalls that while in the studio, producer Jacques Morali asked him, “What exactly is the YMCA?” After Willis explained it to him, he saw the expression on Morali’s face and said, “Don’t tell me, Jacques, you want to write a song about it?” and they quickly wrote the track for the album Cruisin’. Upon the song’s release, YMCA threatened to sue the band over trademark infringement. The organization ultimately settled with the composers out of court and later expressed pride regarding the song saluting the organization.

In 2015, Willis won a legal case against Can’t Stop Productions, successfully claiming that he and Morali had written this and other Village People songs together, without any involvement from executive producer Henri Belolo, who was credited on the song’s original release. The production company claimed that Belolo had written French lyrics that were then adapted by Willis, but this claim was rejected by the court which ruled that Belolo’s name as co-writer should be removed.

Taken at face value, the song’s lyrics extol the virtues of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). However, in the gay culture from which the image and music of the Village People stemmed, the song was implicitly understood as celebrating YMCA’s reputation as a popular cruising and hookup spot, particularly for the younger men to whom it was addressed. The initial goal of Village People producers Morali and Belolo was to attract disco’s gay audience by featuring popular gay fantasy in their music. Although co-creator Morali was gay and the group was initially intended to target gay men, the group became more popular and more mainstream over time.

Conversely, Willis had said that he wrote the song in Vancouver, British Columbia and, through his publicist, that he did not write “Y.M.C.A.” as a gay anthem, but rather as a reflection of the fun activities that young urban black youth experienced at YMCA, such as basketball and swimming. However, Willis has often acknowledged his fondness for double entendre.

The music video for “Y.M.C.A.” was filmed in New York City in July 1978. The location shown the most in the music video is at 213 West 23rd Street. Other filming locations in the city included 395 West Street, the West Side Piers and Hudson River Park. The video features the band singing the song and dancing all over the city and ends with the camera zooming in on the Empire State Building.

Origin of dance and hand movement

The YMCA dance demonstrated in a photomontage. In this rendition, the M (second from left) is done in a popular variant.Members of the grounds crew of Yankee Stadium pause to do the YMCA dance.

YMCA is also the name of a group dance with cheerleader Y-M-C-A choreography invented to fit the song. One of the phases involves moving arms to form the letters Y-M-C-A as they are sung in the chorus:

Y —arms outstretched and raised upwards

M —made by bending the elbows from the ‘Y’ pose so the fingertips meet in front of the chest

C —arms extended to the left

A —hands held together above head

By CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

The dance originated on Dick Clark‘s American Bandstand. The group performed the song during the January 6, 1979 episode. Clark then said to Willis that he would like to show him something, playing the song again with the audience doing YMCA hand gestures. Willis immediately picked up on the dance and mimicked the hand movements back at the audience as other Village People members stared at him with puzzled looks. Clark then turned to Willis and said, “Victor, think you can work this dance into your routine?” Willis responded, “I think we’re gonna have to.” In a 2008 retrospective article for Spin, Randy Jones has opined that the dance may have originated as a misunderstanding: the group’s original choreographed dance had the group clapping above their heads during the chorus and he believes that the audience, believing them to be making the letter “Y”, began following suit.

Following the sixth inning of New York Yankees baseball games at Yankee Stadium, the grounds crew traditionally grooms the infield while leading the crowd in the dance.

By Rdikeman at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

VH1 placed “Y.M.C.A.” at #7 on their list of “100 Greatest Dance Songs” in 2000, while Paste Magazine ranked the song #1 on their list of “The 60 Best Dancefloor Classics” in February 2017.

In 2012, in a landmark ruling in accordance with the Copyright Act of 1976, Willis terminated his copyrights granted to the publishers Can’t Stop Productions and Scorpio Music. In March 2015, it was determined that the sole writers of the song were Morali and Willis.

In March 2020, the US Library of Congress added the song to its National Recording Registry, which preserves for posterity audio that is “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”. In December 2020, “Y.M.C.A.” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

President Donald Trump began using the song (as well as another Village People song, “Macho Man”) to close out his rallies during his 2020 re-election campaign, despite Willis’s demands for Trump to stop. Saturday Night Live parodied the song and the group’s reaction with “Cease and desist” on the October 24, 2020, segment of Weekend Update. As a result, the song was back in the Top 20 on iTunes in November 2020 and hit the #2 spot on the Billboard Dance Digital Song Sales chart. On November 7, following the media’s declaration that Joe Biden had become President-elect and defeated Trump in the 2020 US presidential election, Biden supporters celebrated by dancing in the streets and singing the song across the United States.

The song blared over loudspeakers as Donald Trump boarded Air Force One for the last time on January 20, 2021, en route to Florida before the inauguration of Joe Biden, which Trump refused to attend.

Hideki Saijo version

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In 1979, Japanese singer Hideki Saijo covered the song for his compilation album Young Man/Hideki Flying Up as “Young Man (Y.M.C.A.)“. In Japan, the cover topped on the Oricon chart for five consecutive weeks and became the seventh best-selling single of 1979 in Japan. For the cover, the lyrics was re-written in Japanese by Saijo’s manager, Ryuji Amagai.

“Young Man (Y.M.C.A.)” debuted at number two on the Oricon Weekly Singles Chart, and in the following week, it reached number one, where it stayed for five consecutive weeks. The song finally became the seventh best-selling single of 1979 in Japan and Saijo’s best-selling single to date, with the sales of 808,000 copies.

Following the death of Saijo on 16 May 2018, the song re-entered the chart, peaking at number fifteen on the Billboard Japan Hot 100.

Cover versions[edit]

“Young Man (Y.M.C.A.)” has been covered by multiple other Asian musicians, including Keisuke Kuwata, Aska, George Lam, Yang Kun, and E-girls.

Touché feat. Krayzee version

In 1998, Touché covered the hit for their album Kids in America with Krayzee. In this version Touche take over the vocal parts and only the rap contributes to Krayzee. In Belgium, this cover version was a top ten hit, while the success in the German-speaking countries, however, was rather modest.

Other cover versions and parodies

• The 1996 PC interactive game of Little Critter‘s “Just Me and Mom” from Living Books, parodied the song as “T-A-X-I”, performed by The Village Mice.

• In 1997, Pepsi launched a Super Bowl ad, where five bears danced to an alternate version with “P-E-P-S-I”.

• In 2000, Post‘s Alpha Bits cereal used a reworked version of “Y.M.C.A.”, with lyrics changed to “Y-M-A-B”.

• In 2003, the song was featured in a Diet Dr Pepper commercial, which is parodied as “It’s fun to eat at 4:30 PM”, and was performed by They Might Be Giants as Retirement Village People.

• On July 2, 2004, Colin Powell, then the U.S. Secretary of State, performed a modified version of “YMCA” for his fellow foreign government officials at the ASEAN security meeting in Jakarta. His lyrics includes the lines: “President Bush, he said to me: ‘Colin, I know you will agree. I need you to run the Department of State. We are between a rock and a hard place.”

• In 2013, the Village People appeared in a Wonderful Pistachios commercial, with lyrics changed to “C-R-A-C-K”.
• On March 2, 2013, during the opening monologue on Saturday Night Live, Jay Pharoah parodied President Barack Obama giving a press conference about the recent budget cuts in Congress, saying that there were going to be cuts on the military, social service workers, federal construction projects, and Native American funding. The representatives of each of the four Village People characters did the arm dance in order after Pharaoh recited the appropriate verse of the song.
• The song was covered in the 2013 Universal animated film Despicable Me 2 by Gru’s minions dressed like the Village People. This version was included on the film’s soundtrack.

• In June 2017, YMCA Australia partnered with singer Boy George to release a cover of the song for a campaign on youth issues. This was the first time that any YMCA had embraced the song since its initial release. Boy George’s version is part of the #whynot? campaign launched by YMCA Australia that aims to provide a voice to young people to speak out on issues that affect them.

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