How Village People Became Trump’s MAGA Band

Many people grew up with the music of the Village People, but Jonathan Belolo literally did. His father co-founded the disco group in 1977, and the younger Belolo was immersed in the band’s history, even once joining them onstage as a toddler. But as he watched from behind the stage at the Capitol One Arena in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 19, Belolo beheld one of the strangest sights of the Village People chronicle. As the current version of the long-running band launched into its exuberant “Y.M.C.A.,” they were joined onstage by their most prominent fan — Donald Trump, just hours away from taking the presidential oath of office.

“It was completely surreal, like, ‘What is happening?’” says Belolo, whose family-owned company, Can’t Stop Productions, oversees the Village People brand, likeness, and music rights. “This very big personality, whether you like him or hate him, like a little kid, dancing and being happy listening to our guys. That was a little strange to see.” At one point, Trump turned to Victor Willis — the sole original member left from the group’s classic Seventies lineup, still dressed in his police officer costume — and, according to Willis, remarked on his longevity. Trump told him that he “noticed I’ve been in the group for quite a while.” In turn, Willis said he’d written the lyrics to “Y.M.C.A.” 

To many watching that night, the sight of a president-elect dawdling around onstage with a band made up of guys dressed as a cop, Native American, construction worker, soldier, cowboy, and biker (or “leather man”) had to be, well, unexpected. Concocted nearly 50 years ago by a pair of French producers, the Village People were the epitome of a novelty band, destined to burn out quickly after their frothy disco songs — “Macho Man,” “In the Navy,” and especially “Y.M.C.A.,” each ubiquitous in clubs and on the radio — ran their course.

But here in 2025, in the nation’s capital, were the Village People, or at least a version of them, performing for a MAGA crowd that had embraced as their own a group of outrageously costumed singers whose imagery could be interpreted as either a celebration of machismo or wink-wink gay fantasy.

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Former member Randy Jones, the first and most iconic cowboy of the band, isn’t surprised by the ongoing appeal of the group’s music, especially that of their most famous song. “When we recorded ‘Y.M.C.A.,’ we wanted to record a pop song,” Jones says. “The very definition of a pop song is ‘popular,’ to get the song heard by and appreciated by as many people as possible. I don’t think we ever did not want any demographic or particular group of people to not listen to our music. As far as I’m concerned, we have made music for everybody.”

The Village People’s status as one of the favorite bands of Trump and his followers is merely the latest strange twist in a group, franchise, and saga that refuses to leave the dance floor, with lineup changes, legal issues, music-vibe shifts, and enough bad blood for a multipart Behind the Music. Not since the days of Studio 54 have the Village People been thrust into the public consciousness the way they have in the past few years. Thanks to the group’s association with Trump and his affiliation with “Y.M.C.A.,” the song returned to the top of the Billboard dance music chart, 47 years after disco’s biggest sing-along hit was released. But even as Trump’s base reveled in dancing and singing along to the song at rallies and inaugural events, longtime fans can’t help but wonder: When and why did this happen?

ANYONE WHO LIVED IN New York City in the mid-Seventies probably knew about the Anvil, the former motel that was turned into a multilevel gay bar and club on the downtown waterfront. With its largely no-women-allowed policy, the Anvil was the place to catch drag shows and hook up with other men, especially in its basement. Felipe Rose, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican and Lakota/Sioux background who dressed in Native American garb, was one of the club’s dancers, often performing with bells on his feet. 

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One night in 1977, Jacques Morali, a French record producer who’d relocated to America, was in the bar and saw Rose dancing. “When he saw me and heard the sound of these sleigh bells, he said, ‘What is that?’” Rose recalls. “And someone said, ‘That’s that guy over there dancing.’ And he looked up and said, ‘Oh, my God.’ I was beautiful. There was nothing like me.”

By then, Morali, who was gay, and his business partner, fellow French record producer and talent scout Henri Belolo, had kick-started a dream of conquering the American music industry with the Ritchie Family, a disco band whose members weren’t actually related. A few nights after visiting the Anvil, as Morali (who died in 1991) told Rolling Stone in 1978, he ventured into another gay bar and saw men dressed as a cowboy and construction worker: “I think in myself that the gay people have no group, nobody, to personalize the gay experience.” As Belolo (who died in 2019) told RS the following year, “He came to me and he said, ‘You know, Henri, we’re gonna make a group called the Village People.’”

Recruiting songwriters Peter Whitehead and Phil Hurtt, Morali and Belolo put together a group of songs with thumpy beats and lyrics that saluted the gay communities in Greenwich Village, San Francisco, Fire Island, and Hollywood. (“Don’t go in the bushes/someone might grab ya” was one line from “Fire Island,” about the secluded Long Island area.) “It’s a very specific concept album about gay life, about LGBTQ values,” Jonathan Belolo says. “It’s an activist album. The lyrics are about raising your hands or being who you are in daylight. Henri was not gay at all. But he loved the music, and he said all the best music played in the gay clubs back then.” To sing lead, the producers recruited Willis and his meaty soul growl, then on display in the original cast of the Broadway version of The Wiz. 

When the album Village People was released, an actual group didn’t yet exist — its cover photo featured male models, and Willis’ Broadway work prohibited him from making the shoot. But after the album became a club hit, the band’s label, Casablanca, realized there needed to be a proper Village People for live performances. The producers cobbled together a band that included Willis, Rose, and backup singers Alex Briley and Whitehead, which soon gave way to the classic lineup: Willis (the cop), Rose (Native American), Briley (soldier), Randy Jones (cowboy), Glenn Hughes (leather man), and David Hodo (construction worker). 

Early on, Casablanca placed ads for the band in gay-life magazines like The Advocate. But little by little, the group’s gay roots faded into the background, and they transitioned into a family-friendly act celebrating American archetypes. “The core of the identity is we’re gay and we’re proud of it,” Belolo says, “but the main idea was we’re American and proud of it. It became about stereotypes and archetypes. Cowboys and Indians never killed themselves. They’re happy. They’re smiling. You have Black cops alongside white construction workers and Native Americans, and everybody’s a peaceful, joyful version of the melting pot. The Seventies were a dark time in the culture, and so to be presented with this very rosy version of it, maybe subconsciously a lot of people in America needed to see that.”

The ambiguous nature of the group’s appeal came to the fore when they were recording their third album, 1978’s Cruisin’. The origins of “Y.M.C.A.,” originally credited to Belolo, Morali, and Willis, are still debated by current and former members, but everyone agrees that Morali was intrigued by visits to a Y.M.C.A. on the northern border of Greenwich Village. “I got Jacques to go a few times with me,” Jones  says. “He was amazed at all that was included in one facility: gyms, basketball courts, track, food, classes, even rooms for out-of-towners. Some of my chums from the gym had dabbled in the adult film industry, and I think ol’ Jacques was more than starstruck each time one would come up and say howdy while we were working out.” Adds Rose, “Jacques was fascinated, because guys could work out there and also have sex.”

Willis (who was straight, unlike some of the other band members) says that the song started when Morali asked him what the initials Y.M.C.A. stood for: “Young Men’s Christian Association.” “He said, ‘Very interesting … you think we should write a song about it?’” Willis recalls. But Willis insists the inspiration for the lyrics was the Y.M.C.A. in his native San Francisco and that the song had more to do with layups than hookups. “I was playing basketball and sports at the Y.M.C.A. and watching people who didn’t have enough money to go to the Ritz-Carlton and needed someplace to stay,” he says. “It’s a place to get back on your way. That’s what the lyrics express. People read whatever they want into everything.”

To this day, Willis remains sensitive about that interpretation of the song, going so far as to announce last year that his wife and manager, attorney Karen Willis, would sue any outlet that used the phrase “gay anthem” to describe the song. “I don’t mind if gay people want to claim it as a gay anthem for them,” he clarifies. “My thing is that when anybody wants to make a story on it, and they say ‘gay anthem’ because of the illicitness of the lyrics, that’s incorrect, because there’s nothing in my lyrics that says anything about gayness or gay acts at the Y.M.C.A. If you’re going to say anything, just say ‘anthem.’”

Released in 1978, after John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever swept across America, “Y.M.C.A.” hit Number Two on the charts, and an appearance on American Bandstand helped popularize what became the song’s signature dance, spelling out each letter with your arms — the Seventies version of Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go.” “We didn’t have any choreography,” Rose says. “We would just clap our hands toward the end of the song. But the arm thing, we always give credit to American Bandstand. We took what the kids did with Dick Clark.”

The group was signed to star in a feature film, co-starring Steve Guttenberg and Caitlyn Jenner, and made the cover of Rolling Stone. But the Village People’s fall was as fast as their ascent. During the production of 1980’s Can’t Stop the Music, Willis left the group over what he calls issues with the script and to pursue a solo career. The backlash toward the film (The New York Times said it lacked “any real plot or momentum”) and to disco itself — including the notorious “Disco Demolition” record-burning night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1979 — put an end to the band’s string of hits.

With new lead singer Ray Simpson, the Village People briefly ditched their costumes for New Romantics fashion (think Adam Ant) and recorded 1981’s Renaissance, which flopped. “We were so upset that people hated the movie,” Rose says. “We just changed the image.” Willis briefly returned to write and sing on one of their later albums, but the Village People, like platform shoes, looked like just another relic from a long-gone era. 

IN THE LATE EIGHTIES, the Village People returned, when recognizable members like Rose and Jones, but not Willis, licensed the name from Can’t Stop Productions and hit the road, playing weddings, corporate affairs — anywhere that would have them. The response was now heartwarming nostalgia: The group was parodied in Wayne’s World and U2’s “Discothèque” video and even toured with Cher. “The Village People is this cool little toy that you put in the closet somewhere and forgot about it, and then you grew up a bit and found it again,” says Eric Anzalone, who joined the band in the mid-Nineties, first as a fill-in construction worker before taking over the biker/leather role from Hughes, who died in 2001. “The group is just about having a good time and you get to dress up, which is always kind of cool.” 

When the group kicked into “Y.M.C.A.” at a European festival, Anzalone watched as thousands spontaneously broke into the arm routine. “I have never seen a sight like that, with a couple hundred thousand people, as far as you can see,” he says. “It literally took my breath away.”

But little did that incarnation of the band, which still included several longtime members, know that they were living, or dancing, on borrowed time. In the late 2000s, Victor Willis, whose solo career had never taken off and who’d battled drug issues and gone into rehab, reentered the picture. During his time with the band, Willis had transferred the copyrights of his songs to Belolo and Morali’s company. With the prompting of his attorney wife, Willis decided to take advantage of copyright termination rights, which allowed songwriters to reclaim their rights after 35 years. There were lawsuits and legal negotiations, but Willis successfully regained his copyrights for 13 Village People songs. In a later action, he proved that he, not Henri Belolo, had written the lyrics to some of those songs, including “Y.M.C.A.” As a result, Willis’s share of song royalties jumped from a third to half.  

The victory was a potential windfall for Willis, but the singer wasn’t done yet. Above all, he wanted to rejoin his old band. “It was my group,” Willis says, “and I wanted to be able to perform my music.” (In later court papers, Willis asserted that the Village People were formed by him and Morali and that their records were “simply Victor Willis with use of session background singers.”) As part of the settlement with Willis, Can’t Stop Productions — which still held the rights to the group’s likeness, name, trademark, and publishing — informed the 2017 version of the Village People that their license was being terminated. Victor and Karen Willis’ Harlem West Music Group would now be granted rights to license the  trademark for live performances. As Belolo says, “It was very important that there could not be two bands called the Village People on the market.” 

Now back in charge, Willis says he approached some of the other members with a chance to stay on. “I offered the guys that were there to join when I first came back to the group, and they refused,” he says, “because they wanted to do their own thing.” (The group offered its own account in a Facebook post last month: “We said No because it didn’t include us all!!!!”) Belolo was hoping for a reconciliation among all parties, but it wasn’t meant to be. “When people don’t like each other and when there’s intensity in business relationships,” he says, “sometimes these things fall apart.” As a result, the current lineup of the band was essentially let go. With an all-new incarnation, Willis resumed touring with the Village People, and the previous version of the band would now be called the Kings of Disco (with “former members of the Village People” tagged on). 

In the beginning, relations between the two camps could be fraught. On their social media accounts, the Kings of Disco made it clear they were continuing despite Willis, even with a name change. In a later lawsuit against Disney, which contends that the company bungled security, treatment, and payment for a 2018 performance at Disney World, Karen Willis accused “the former version of the group” (who were not named in the suit) of “encouraging fans to contact Disney to complain” about the show, and then were then subjected to “taunting” by some of those fans. (Kings of Disco manager Deborah Crawford denies that statement: “We did not send anyone, and we would never do that” to Disney, she says.) The case is still pending. 

By 2020, tensions among all parties appeared to have cooled. Thanks to a settlement of their own with Belolo’s company, the Kings of Disco could still perform as long as they didn’t open their concerts dressed in the classic costumes and only performed a certain number of Village People songs. “It was just a big blow to us to lose the trademark,” says William Whitefield, who had joined in the construction worker role. “But what are you gonna do?”

And then came Donald Trump. 

 NO ONE IN THE VILLAGE PEOPLE ORBIT can pin down the exact moment when Trump became a fan of “Y.M.C.A.” or the band, but many assume it began with the New York nightlife of the Seventies. Jones and Rose recall seeing a young Trump on the New York club scene. “I know he has been aware of it since we first met back in 1978 at Studio 54, where [‘Y.M.C.A.’] was being played every night,” Jones says. (Willis says he had “never heard” those stories.) It’s also likely that Trump experienced “Y.M.C.A.” repeatedly at New York Yankees’ home games: The song is played in the sixth inning, where it’s more associated with sports fandom than gay culture.

But by 2020, Trump’s interest in the Village People was undeniable, and he began using “Y.M.C.A.” at his rallies without notifying or asking permission from Belolo’s company or the group. “It was a complete shock when it happened the first time, and I had a hard time trying to understand why the hell he wanted to do that and why the audience liked it,” says Belolo, who was still coping with the cancer-related death of his father the year before. “We were still grieving, and to see this happening and completely out of our hands, they made us very angry. Those songs were for everybody, whether you’re progressive or conservative, white or Black, whatever your sexuality. To have that music used during a campaign that’s very partisan felt inappropriate. We didn’t approve it, and we didn’t choose it.” 

Willis acknowledged Trump’s use of the song in a post in early 2020, but took a stronger stance a few months later, after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. “I ask that you no longer use any of my music at your rallies especially ‘YMCA’ and ‘Macho Man,’” he wrote. “Sorry, but I can no longer look the other way.” Belolo considered suing the Trump campaign but says it would have been “extremely difficult and taxing” and decided against legal action. 

The issue seemed to resolve itself when Trump lost the 2020 election. But in 2023, newly declared candidate Trump again began to play “Y.M.C.A.” at his rallies. When a group of performers dressed up as the Village People to appear at an event at Mar-a-Lago that year, Karen Willis sent a cease-and-desist to the Trump camp, which decried “any such further unauthorized use of the Village People image in association with the songs and his campaign (or in his personal capacity).”  

But as the 2024 presidential campaign continued, Victor Willis softened his stance. “I noticed that Trump genuinely liked the song, and that each time he used it, it was bringing so much joy to the American people,” he says. According to Willis, he instructed performing-rights organization BMI, which oversees his publishing, not to suspend Trump’s political license to use the song. “That’s how we let him continue to do it, and I think we made the right decision.” 

The election, Willis says, cemented the choice he’d made. According to the singer, the Village People were invited to perform at Mar-a-Lago but couldn’t due to prior commitments. However, when an invite came to play the inauguration, Willis eagerly put on his cop outfit. “I’m a Democrat, so basically he wasn’t the candidate I voted for,” he says. “But afterwards, it was a situation where we believe that whoever won, won, and that you’re supposed to get behind whoever the president is until he does something incorrect to us. We felt that it was only appropriate to stand behind who won the presidency.”

The announcement that the Village People would be performing alongside Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood, and other Trump faves resulted in its own shock and awe in the band’s world. On the official Village People socials, MAGA applauded the group for performing. But former members say they were inundated with emails and posts questioning or damning them for taking part and had to remind fans that the Village People now had a very different lineup. The Kings of Disco issued a statement clarifying that they were not the same band that had signed up for the Trump events. “We would never perform at any political rally or inauguration or for any political figure or politician,” says Whitefield.

Despite his own reservations, Belolo wound up flying to D.C. from his Paris home for the inauguration. “We would never have come during a rally before the election,” he says. “But now that there’s a transition of power, now that it’s more about celebrating America, I feel comfortable with that, and I think Henri and Jacques would have felt the same. That doesn’t mean we endorse the politics. A lot of it is deeply contrary to what I believe and what the band believes. I understand it’s hard to hear that for many people, given the personality of the new president.”

Meanwhile, the business of the Village People is once again ramping up. Belolo had been shopping around a jukebox musical based on the band well before Trump started dancing to “Y.M.C.A.,” with few takers. But last year, for an undisclosed sum, he and his brother Anthony partnered with publishing company Primary Wave to exploit the band’s songs, recordings, and overall brand. Starting with a first-ever Village People video game (“Disco Star”) that he hopes to drop this year, Belolo is exploring not just a musical but a documentary, biopic, and an avatar version of the band modeled after ABBA’s entry into the virtual space. Willis, meanwhile, says he has finished a new Village People album for release sometime this year.

How will Trump’s fandom affect it all? Belolo himself isn’t sure. “It could turn out to be more difficult for us to do these projects now,” he admits. “Who knows?” For his part, Willis is more sanguine. “It should be fine,” he says. “If something goes awry with Trump or what he’s doing, we’ll speak on that. We have no regrets for performing for the inauguration. That was the biggest thing that Village People has ever done, and it’s an honor to be invited to the White House by whoever the president is.”

One thing old or new fans shouldn’t count on is a reunion of the remaining original members. Belolo would love to see that happen — “that’s on the table for the next few years,” he says — but Willis isn’t eager to repopulate that particular Village. “I’m happy with the guys that have been with me. We have a great lineup, and they do a great job at what they do,” he says. “I’m not ready to go backwards.”

So as unlikely as a Village People comeback may seem, maybe it makes sense that a group equally steeped in drama and nostalgia for an earlier time would be the perfect soundtrack for Trump 2.0? Where it all lands, for the group and the country, is another matter. “As a foreigner, I’m proud of being part, in a small way, of a moment in time that is part of American history,” Belolo says. “Now I really hope the new president will not turn out to be the end of democracy in America.”