Hey, Everyone, "Y.M.C.A." by the Village People Is Actually Really, Really Good
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Music

Hey, Everyone, "Y.M.C.A." by the Village People Is Actually Really, Really Good

At the heart of a wedding reception classic lies a sad and sorry song about the fragility of masculinity. With a funny dance routine attached.

When I was a younger, more callow and callous man, I was convinced of three things. The first was that any meal consisting primarily of vegetables wasn't worth eating. The second, that beer was a uniquely foul drink that I'd never willingly consume. The third, and most fundamental, was that the Village People's 1978 paean to homosocial inclusivity, "Y.M.C.A.", was quite possibly the most rotten, rancid, and rank record ever made.

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These days you'll find me splashing the best part of a tenner on a bowl of steamed courgette and raw pak choi, glugging pint after pint after glorious pint of crisp, cold lager, and—in a move that a decade ago seemed less likely than Donald Trump running for presidency—rounding the day off with "Y.M.C.A." on repeat. I've become the man I thought I was destined to never be. And, truth be told, it feels good.

The reason why the song rankled so much back then was simple. In my head—the head in which I was an intellectual great destined for some kind of world dominance, the head in which I readily ignored the fact that I was an awkward and uncomfortable and largely miserable pre-teen—"Y.M.C.A." was as naff as it got. It was the sound of the school discos I never frequented, and the birthday parties I was never invited to in the first place. It was a song that positively reeked of the perfume and fags of community centres from Truro to Todmorden, a crusty relic of a bygone age none of us want back. The "Y.M.C.A." was Noel Edmunds and instant mash potato, ITV and a weekend away in Skegness. It as an abomination, a grossly pulsating boil on music's broad back, and I wanted nothing, nothing, to do with it.

So, for years, I didn't. Of course, being a human being in the western world meant that every so often the horny stomper itself snuck up on me like a particularly gormless practical joke, causing me to recoil into a foetal position, whinnying like a lame foal, practically screaming for it to stop. It never did because the "Y.M.C.A." has become so engrained in our psyche that it's always playing somewhere. Somewhere in England, right now as you're reading this, a bloke with a wig and a dodgy hip's sucking on a humbug as he waves his stiff creaking arms in the air. Somewhere else, a younger sister's singing it into a hairbrush, unaware of how the song'll come to haunt her in later life after a particularly embarrassing incident at a friend's sleepover. These things will happen until the Earth itself implodes and man and his history and his culture evaporate into the blank nothingness of the universe itself. And even then "Y.M.C.A." will whisper on the wind.

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As I got older and understood less about the world, I softened slightly, becoming less prone to spewing the grandstanding declaratives that had pockmarked my youth. This version of me had begun to accept, then like, then love disco. And though this version of me wasn't quite ready to accept the Village People with the open arms I'd offered to Donald Byrd or GQ or The Gibson Brothers or even Alcazar, he was getting there.

To understand why, and here's the big revelation you've been waiting for everyone, "Y.M.C.A." deserves a place in the disco canon, you have to understand that underneath the novelty bluster, far away from the end of the pier show and hen nights, there's a deeply sincere song about the fragility of masculinity waiting to be delved into head first. Now you might understandably be thinking, "Ah, great, what the world needs now is more art that focuses it's attention on the plight of the man," and you'd be right, but hear me out: "Y.M.C.A." has the kind of emotional depth most artists would chop a bollock or two off to get anywhere near to.

Men, as we know all too well, find direct communication difficult. We can sit in a pub all night long and not address a single issue of emotional importance. We can take country-long drives with our fathers and sons and say nothing but "God, Chris Evans is a twat." We can watch a best mate get married and only squeak out a "well done," after nine pints, three vodkas, and a shot of absinthe-laced gravy drunk out of the bride's mother's hat. Actually talking to someone about something of any kind of seriousness fills (most of) us with the same gnawing horror as dental surgery, or sober karaoke. We are inarticulate and uncomfortable at the best of times, downright mute and broken at the worst. Hiding behind statistics or spurious list-making, we shy away from reality, afraid of the consequences of living life in any other way. We are, in short, fucking awful.

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Well, I am. And most of my friends are. And most of their friends are too. But you know who wasn't awful? The lads we now know as the Village People. The Village People—in all their winkingly macho glory—probably spent their days and nights chewing one another's ears off about the big topics: sex, religion, death, the best place to get a really good sandwich in New Cross. How do I know this? I know this because I'm now someone who willingly and voluntarily listens to the "Y.M.C.A."

Think about it: "Y.M.C.A." is an unbridled ode to masculine support networks. "Young man, there's no need to feel down/I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground," they sing, with utmost force and feeling. It's that direct "young man" that gets me—we've all been the skint and miserable young man they're addressing, and when you are that young man it's hard to ask for help. The Village People know that. They understand that. And because they understand that, they're going to offer you a helping hand. They want nothing in return but your company, because they know all you really want is company. "They have everything for you men to enjoy/You can hang out with all the boys." Could anything be simpler, be better?

The song romps along at such a pace that its sincerity and underlying sadness is swept away by the pumping rambunctiousness of it all. The chorus—a whirling dervish of a thing that seems to go on forever and ever—aids with the process of emotional disguise. No one has the time to think about loneliness and poverty while they're screeching "ISSSS FUN TO STAYYY AT THE WHYYYYYY EMMMMM SEEEEE AYYYYYY."

And it's that that made me reappraise something I'd previously viewed as some kind of totemic devil figure of everything that's wrong about pop culture. The concealed melancholy of it all, once recognised, is almost unbearably appealing. It is a cry for help and recognition masked as a bit of cheesy fluff aimed at sozzled aunts and sausage roll stuffed godfathers. This is the power of disco—underneath the glitz and glamour, the silky strings and the ludicrously lugubrious brass, the creamy choruses and the endless refrains, there's something deeply sad at play. All good things, all good nights, come to an end. Nothing stays golden.

I just wish i'd been listening properly all those years ago. "Young man, young man, put your pride on the shelf," indeed.

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