The Village People will perform during Donald Trump inauguration celebrations, the band’s frontman Victor Willis announced on Monday. “We know this won’t make some of you happy to hear however we believe that music is to be performed without regard to politics,” Willis wrote in a Facebook post. The band’s hit songs “Y.M.C.A.” and “Macho Man” became Trump’s go-to anthems on the campaign trail, often accompanied by his signature dance. “Our song Y.M.C.A. is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost,” Willis continued. “Therefore, we believe it’s now time to bring the country together with music.” Willis said that the Village People will perform at several inaugural events, including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Inaugural-Eve Ball. “Y.M.C.A.,” from the band’s 1978 album Cruisin', was long viewed as a celebration of gay culture. The band’s name is based off Greenwich Village, New York’s most vibrant gay neighborhood in the seventies, and each of the Village People dressed up as a popular gay archetype. While other artists have flinched at Trump using their music, Willis has embraced the song’s new meaning. He said that beginning in January, his wife “will start suing each and every news organisation that falsely refers to YMCA, either in their headlines or alluded to in the base of the story, that YMCA is somehow a gay anthem.”
