Array
Victor Willis, a founding member of the Village People, shocked many this week when he defended allowing Donald Trump to use the song during his campaign rallies.
In a Facebook post, Willis noted that Trump had the proper BMI license and that he chose not to revoke permissions after seeing Trump genuinely enjoy and have fun with the song.
To Village People fans and the media:
I am the singer and writer of the lyrics to the hit Y.M.C.A. In fact, as was adjudicated and ruled in a U.S. District Court, I wrote 100% of the lyrics, and my writing partner, Jacques Morali wrote the music.
Since 2020, I’ve received over a thousand complaints about President Elect Trump’s use of Y.M.C.A. With that many complaints, I decided to ask the President Elect to stop using Y.M.C.A. because his use had become a nuisance to me.
However, the use continued because the Trump campaign knew they had obtained a political use license from BMI and absent that license being terminated, they had every right to continue using Y.M.C.A. And they did.
In fact, I started noticing numerous artists withdrawing the President Elect’s use of their material. But by the time I said to my wife one day, hey, “Trump” seems to genuinely like Y.M.C.A. and he’s having a lot of fun with it.
