That said, the genre’s lyrics tended to eschew more overt political statements – and the few that did carry an unambiguous message of gay liberation didn’t chart well.
“That this new movement was born on the night of Judy Garland’s funeral couldn’t have been more appropriate.” “As the cultural adjunct of the gay pride movement, disco was the embodiment of the pleasure-is-politics ethos of a new generation of gay culture, a generation fed up with police raids, draconian laws and the darkness of the closet,” he writes.
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Said first three albums (and especially the first two) carry a surprisingly political energy the more popular tracks, such as the eponymous Macho Man, might be vacuous but others – take I Am What I Am, a defiant chant that suggests exactly what you’d expect it to suggest – envision a world in which male bodies could be free to come together without oppression.Īs far as evoking same-sex love goes, there was a precedent – from disco’s genesis, queered sexual positivity was the life blood of the genre, as Peter Shapiro identifies in Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. It lit a fire in my gut in a way few queer artworks have before. And I was fascinated by the empowerment I felt from Village People, the title track on their eponymous debut album, and an unambiguous call for gay liberation that sounds more akin to a protest chant than a chart topper. San Francisco, with its celebratory high tempo and soul-grasping jubilance, became my on-repeat running anthem. It was all so fun some songs, like Milkshake, which is literally about making a milkshake, were hilariously bad and more joyous for it.
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I found their later albums pretty awful, but I heavily rotated the first three (Village People, Macho Man, and Cruisin’) for a good six months, plus one or two other singles. Once the novelty had worn off somewhat, I flicked on to another song, one I’d not heard (of) before: San Francisco (You’ve Got Me), a punchy, queer-coded ode to the bayside Californian city, which reimagines it as a hedonistic utopia (“Freedom is in the air, yeah / searching for what we all treasure: pleasure”).įor better or worse, I was hooked – and soon I’d listened to nearly their entire discography. Yet unlike most flash-in-the-pan pop hits, which stick to the teeth of pop culture like toffee, this was genuinely catchy. We’ve all heard some variation on the theme, be it the original, a football stadium chant, or Homer Simpson’s ‘Nacho Man’. The chorus of Macho Man has washed through pop culture like torrential rain.
And so the opening drums of the track began: a repetitive “tssh-tssh-tssh, tssh-tssh-tssh”, a simple beat, but one which demands you shake your ass. However the service’s automatic run-on feature clearly disagreed and decided that, when Cowley’s sensual, gay bathhouse-ready rhythms ended, ‘Macho Man’ would be a great follow-up. It was actually an accident of Spotify’s algorithm – I had been listening to an album by revered disco pioneer Patrick Cowley, whose ethereal, frisky compositions, often soundtracks to ‘80s porn films, couldn’t be more different from the Village People’s stereotypical garishness. Then, around a year and a half ago, I listened to their music out of choice – the listen that changed it all. Can you imagine being caught listening to the Village People with any kind of sincerity? I avoided it quite organically, actually we all have to at least pretend we have high tastes, after all. Yet, because of the band’s supremely cheesy reputation, their music passed me by for a long time. Their signature song YMCA – one of the most famous of all time, most recently appropriated by Donald Trump supporters, who have turned it into M-A-G-A – is about cruising for sex in a mens’ health club others celebrate traditionally male-oriented institutions such as the navy and the police. However, be this memory real or simulacrum, it strikes me as hilarious given what the Village People are universally known for: tongue-in-cheek gay innuendo, sparsely covered by a flimsy veneer of hyper-macho drag. Films that make the countryside seem less white This is probably where we all imagine we heard Village People for the first time – those of my generation, at least: such is the way their biggest hits have become the sonic staples of our biggest events and get-togethers. I should admit immediately, though, that I suspect this memory to be made up. I was doubtless very young – as I remember, the venue was either a school disco or a wedding reception. I can’t recall exactly where I was when I first heard a song by the Village People.