The Gayest Moments in Music

THE GAYEST MOMENT IN MUSIC: The Village People Check Into the YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association was founded to promote Bible study. The Village People were founded to promote sodomy. Something had to give …

"Y.M.C.A." is a cute, clean song about a dirty subject. A NO. 2 pop giant in 1978, it's been played at millions of ball games, thousands of bar mitzvahs, and sung in public by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Which is pretty odd and unexpected history for a song about men showering together.

OK, nothing in the song is expressly gay. But in the '70s, long before Will & Grace aired on prime-time TV, sex songs were written in code: "Afternoon Delight," which is as filthy as any Prince track, sounded like a soap commercial. So when the Village People directed a confused "young man" to a private place where "you can have a good time" and "hang out with all the boys" the subtext was clear: buggery.

Jacques Morali, the bossy, insecure French producer who devised the idea of a costumed group of macho archetypes, noticed a YMCA in the Chelsea area of New York and asked the band, in broken English, "What is YMCA?" Morali was gay, and the songs he wrote for the Village People coyly refer to Fire Island, San Francisco and other elements of queer culture. With their muscles, mustaches and leather pants, the Village People were the gayest act American had ever seen until B2K. And "Y.M.C.A.," written in 20 minutes, was even more cartoonishly exuberant ("There's no need!/To!/Be!/Unhappy!") than other disco hits of the era. If this traffic cop pulled you over, you really might not mind.

A few months after its release, American Bandstand host Dick Clark booked the Village People on a TV variety show he hosted. "The YMCA people called and threatened to sue us if we played the song," Clark tells Blender. "They were very, very uptight about it."

"The Y wasn't sure what it thought about the song," Ken Gladish, national executive director of the YMCA of the U.S.A., admits. "There was a lot of controversy."

The Young Men's Christian Association was founded in 1844 by religious leaders to isolate men from female temptation and encourage Bible study. Over the years, ironically, the male-only enclaves became known as safe meeting places for closeted gays.

One Y pamphlet from 1909 warned against the presence of "lisping" men.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson's chief of staff was arrested for having sex with a man in the restroom of a Y two blocks from the White House.

Today, the Y no longer objects to the song, and plays it at official Y events. (Gladish even admits to having done the "Y.M.C.A." dance. "Come on, are you kidding?") Whether through repetition or the mainstreaming of gay culture, the song seems to have lost its power to shock.

"It's a party staple," says Eric Culter, president of M&M Entertainment in Boca Raton, Florida, which produces 150 bar mitzvahs and corporate events a year. "Eighty percent of the parties have to have it. It's a song everybody can dance to."

At banquet halls across America, Aunt Sylvia and Grandpa Barney dance happily to a song about men meeting men in secret. The song has nearly become a national anthem — like the "Star Spangled Banner," but with real spangles. Colin Powell once sang a revised version of the song Indonesia, ("President Bush, he said to me, 'Colin, I need you to run the Department of State'") at the ASEAN Forum, an annual security meeting for foreign ministers. Though the event was off-limits to reporters, a videotape appeared on CNN — like 50 cent, Powell had been bootlegged.

When Blender asked if the secretary of state is a big Village People fan, a spokesman sighed uncomfortably and said, "This is not something that should have been made public." It was good to see that Jacques Morali's gaytastic march could still make someone uncomfortable.