Village People lead singer Victor Willis says he got an apology from comedian Jim Jeffreries for saying "YMCA" is code for gay sex, but he cops to the fact the song definitely can be taken 2 ways.
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00:00Let's talk about Jim Jeffries. You and Karen, your wife, have sent a cease and desist letter
00:09to him demanding an apology.
00:11The village people, like, what they've done for a buck, right? Let's be honest. What is
00:17the YMCA song about? It's about dudes getting f***ed in a hostel. It's f***ing in showers
00:22in a hostel, right? When you're a young man who's being kicked out of your home, there's
00:26a place you can go, I said, young man, when you're short on your day. And everyone, all
00:30these right-wing people are dancing around to basically a song about bumming in the shower.
00:35Yeah, there's a lot of conservative people who go, oh, there's gay propagandas everywhere.
00:40And then they go and clap the village people and Trump dancing with them.
00:43And then they come out. Now, they're five gay guys of different races. And they're like,
00:49they just, they shouldn't typically be voting for Trump, right? But that's their payday.
00:54They're back in the charts. They're making a lot of money again. They get to do a big
00:57concert. So they've sold their soul a little bit, right?
01:00So kind of get into it, because look, Victor, we've had you on TMZ Live before, and we've
01:07talked about whether YMCA is a gay anthem, whether the group itself is kind of telegraphing
01:14that. But this goes beyond that. And this has to do with Code for Sex. So tell us what
01:18the gripe is.
01:19Well, you know, he went over the line when he got into saying that it had to do with
01:27men having sex in the bathroom. And if you, I'm sure you've heard and listened to my lyrics.
01:34There's nothing in my lyrics that says anything about that. So we approached him with, Karen
01:40approached him with it. And he apologized and said that he was going to rephrase what
01:47it was that he said and say it differently. Because the way he said it, as you heard it,
01:54it was actually, it was defamatory.
01:57I remember back then in the gay community, there was this, it's almost a double entendre.
02:05And I actually pulled some of the lyrics. And I mean, I get it that on the surface level,
02:12it could mean anything. But, you know, they have everything for young men to enjoy. You
02:17can hang out with all the boys. You can do whatever you feel. There were a lot of people
02:23who kind of winked at that and said, yeah, they're kind of talking to two groups here.
02:31They're talking to straight people about maybe, you know, just playing basketball. And maybe
02:36they're talking to the gay community where they can have a laugh about something else.
02:40Well, you know, that was something that I credited myself on was writing songs with what
02:50was called a double entendre. Basically, I would write a song to where you could take it any kind
02:57of way you wanted it. If you were straight, you could take it with the lyrics for somebody
03:02straight. Or if you were gay, you could take it for somebody gay. The gay community, for example,
03:08when we look at the record sales and how many people come to our shows, there's like 10 percent
03:14of a gay community that have been coming to my shows. And I've been there almost the last almost
03:2010 years now. That's shocking. That's shocking to me. Yes. You would think it has been 60 percent
03:29of straight white women and 30 percent of straight white men. So there are more. So
03:35there are three times the number of straight white men than gay men and gay men that come
03:41to the village people concerts. What?