The Razzies’ founder John Wilson listed the film as one of “The 100 Most Enjoyable Bad Movies Ever Made,” and we heartily concur with its inclusion on this Buzzfeed list of 28 Bad Movies With Your Gay Friends. Starring Steve Guttenberg, the film was so bad, it inspired the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards, deservedly winning the first Worst Picture Golden Raspberry Award. The group’s last hit was the 1979 single “In the Navy.” The video was made possible by striking a deal with the United States Navy wherein the band could film aboard the Navy’s ships and the Navy could use the song as a recruitment tool.Ĭan’t Stop the Music, the Village People’s disaster of a film, was made after Willis left the band. You can see the origins of the hand motions in the clip above.
The well-known dance was created by audience members on American Bandstand. The song was an international smash, topping charts around the globe, but it only reached No. From bar mitzvahs to baseball games, the song has been inescapable for nearly four decades. The gay connotations of “Y.M.C.A.” may be debatable (sure, I guess), but its lasting appeal certainly isn’t. For what it’s worth, the very masc video above doesn’t feel unlike something Nick Jonas would release today. 25 in the U.S., but a medley with “I Am What I Am” and “Key West” performed better on Billboard’s Dance Music/Club Play singles chat, hitting No. The first single by the Village People was an ode to San Francisco (packaged with B-side “Fire Island”), but their first charting single was “Macho Man.” Released in 1978, it peaked at No. Get down to a few of their most famous tunes below. Whether or not the Village People are officially a gay group, their link to the gay community is undeniable. So was the song written to celebrate gay men at the YMCA? Yes. That’s what Jacques was thinking when he wrote it, because our first album was possibly the gayest album ever.
There was not one double entendre in the music,” but then later told Spin ““Y.M.C.A.” certainly has a gay origin. Construction worker David Hodo told filmmaker Jamie Kastner “People always talk about the double entendre. But it’s one of those ambiguous songs that was taken that way because of the gay association with Village People.’”Įven individual band members offer wildly divergent explanations about gay messaging in their music. ‘When he says, ‘Hang out with all the boys’… he’s talking about the boys, the fellas…. His publicist Alice Wolf issued a statement in 2007:“Victor Willis wrote about the YMCA and having fun there, but the type of fun he was talking about was straight fun,” insists Wolf, adding that Willis has nothing against homosexuality. Victor Willis, the original lead singer of the group, is one of the band’s most outspoken critics of the Village People’s gay image. “So much of our music was played in black, Latin, and gay underground clubs that’s where the first Village People album found its initial audience.” “We didn’t start as a gay group, and not everyone in the group was gay - that’s an incorrect notion,” Randy Jones, the Village People’s second cowboy, told Spin Magazine. Despite the group’s gay origins and imagery, whether or not the Village People were “a gay group” is still a matter of debate, even among the group’s various members. Inspired by the manly looks he observed in the clubs, French music producer Jacques Morali with his business partner Henri Belolo developed the group for gay audiences. Of course, all the macho imagery was rooted in the 1970s gay scene in Greenwich Village.