Village People frontman Victor Willis dies at 74
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Victor Willis (centre) was a co-founder of 1970s disco group Village People and co-wrote hits including YMCA, In The Navy and Macho Man.
PHOTO: AFP
- Victor Willis, lead singer of the Village People and co-writer of hits like YMCA, died at 74 after a short illness, his spouse announced.
- The Village People became iconic with their disco hits and camp characters, appealing to the LGBTQ community and beyond.
- YMCA was used at Trump rallies, sparking debate; Willis urged giving Trump a chance but warned Village People would oppose LGBTQ rights restrictions.
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WASHINGTON – Victor Willis, lead singer of the disco group Village People whose hit song YMCA (1978) became a fixture at rallies for US President Donald Trump, has died, his spouse said in a Facebook post on July 1. He was 74.
“It is with profound sadness that I must announce the death of my husband, VICTOR WILLIS. Victor passed away on Tuesday June 30, 2026, as a result of a short, but aggressive illness,” the post on Willis’ official page said.
The Texas-born musician was a co-founder of the Village People and co-wrote hits including YMCA, In The Navy (1979) and Macho Man (1978) that swept the world’s dance floors in the late 1970s.
The group, which began in 1977 when Willis accepted an invitation from producer Jacques Morali and his business partner Henri Belolo, eventually grew to a line-up of six or seven performers.
“I had a dream that you sang lead vocals on an album I produced, and it went very, very big... I’ll make you a star,” Morali reportedly told Willis, according to the band’s website.
With their flamboyant costumes and choreography, the group became a pop culture phenomenon, targeting disco’s large gay audience with camp fantasy characters of butch builders, bikers, cowboys and soldiers.
“Macho Types Wanted for World-Famous Disco Group – Must Dance and Have a Moustache,” read an early advertisement seeking members to bolster the group’s line-up, according to its website.
The Village People name was long assumed to be a reference to Greenwich Village in New York, which was the centre of the city’s gay scene in the 1970s.
Known for his signature “cop” and “admiral” stage personas, Willis left the group in 1980.
He struggled with drug addiction, and took a plea deal over cocaine possession in 2006.
Willis rejoined Village People in 2017 following a victory in a copyright lawsuit which allowed him to reclaim part-ownership of some of the band’s biggest hits.
YMCA, whose lyrics urge “young men” to head to the Young Men’s Christian Association in New York, became an anthem for the LGBTQ community and beyond.
In 2020, the song was added to the National Recording Registry by the US Library of Congress, as well as the Grammy Hall of Fame.
But some say the song has been co-opted by the American right wing following its use at rallies and events supporting Trump.
Trump developed his own trademark dance to accompany the song – a stiff shuffle of the hips and fist bumps at waist-high level.
Willis has rejected interpretations of the song as a gay anthem, saying in 2024 that it was a “false assumption based on the fact that my writing partner was gay, and some (not all) of Village People were gay, and that the first Village People album was totally about gay life”.
Village People performed YMCA at a Trump rally in January 2025, before the Republican was inaugurated for his second presidential term.
Willis said at the time: “Let’s give President Trump a chance, regardless of what you may have thought about him in the past.
“Let’s see what he’s going to do moving forward and if he does things to restrict LGBTQ rights, Village People will be the first to speak out,” he said. AFP
