tayahomepage.blogg.se - Ymca stands for youth

I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground"

Barry from Sauquoit, Ny"Young man, there's no need to feel down.

Jamal from San Francisco855 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA 94108, this is the YMCA you will find me at, young man get your feet off the ground, wont you listen to me, I said young man, best representation of true joy and coming out of any song around.

Evan from SturbridgeBuddy, I don’t think that’s a biker.

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. Then he gave it to Victor Willis and said, "Fill in the rest." I was a bit skeptical about some of our hits, but the minute I heard "Y.M.C.A.," I knew we had something special. Jacques wrote "Y.M.C.A." in about 20 minutes - the melody, the chorus, the outline. Those visits with me planted a seed in him, and that's how he got the idea for "Y.M.C.A." - by literally going to the YMCA.ĭavid Hodo (construction worker): We had finished our third album Cruisin', and we needed one more song as a filler. Plus, with Jacques being gay, I had a lot of friends I worked out with who were in the adult-film industry, and he was impressed by meeting people he had seen in the videos and magazines. He was fascinated by a place where a person could work out with weights, play basketball, swim, take classes, and get a room.

I took Jacques (Morali) there three or four times in 1977, and he loved it. Randy Jones (cowboy): When I moved to New York in 1975, I joined the McBurney YMCA on 23rd Street. In 2008, Spin magazine asked some of the Village People about this song. The disco scene, and the Village People, were welcoming to all. The gay stereotype roles played well to the LGBT community associated with disco at the time, but looking back, it's kind of ridiculous to think that discos were "a gay thing" (nobody was having suspicions of, say, John Travolta). Henri Belolo was not gay, but Jacques Morali was, and the image conformed to his vision. In fact, from 1978-1982 he was married to Phylicia Ayers-Allen, who played Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show and later married the sports announcer Ahmad Rashad. The songwriting credit on "Y.M.C.A" goes to Morali, Belolo and Victor Willis, who was the policeman in the group.Ī common misconception was that Village People were an all-gay troupe. Roles and costumes were carefully selected among them were a cowboy, biker, soldier, policeman, and construction worker complete with hard hat.

Songwriters Phil Hurtt and Peter Whitehead were tapped to compose songs with gay underpinnings. In 1977, producers Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo assembled a group designed to attract gay audiences while parodying (some claimed exploiting) that same constituency's stereotypes.