Victor Willis, the Village People singer who co-wrote some the band’s biggest hits including “Y.M.C.A.,” has died. He was 74.
The band announced Willis’ death in a statement to social media, saying, “We are profoundly sad to announce the death of Victor Willis, lead singer of Village People,” adding that “Victor passed on Monday June 30, 2026 of a short but aggressive illness.”
Willis, born July 1, 1951, in Texas but a San Francisco native, grew up around gospel music in his minister father’s Baptist church. As a young musical prodigy, Willis said he joined in sessions with Dizzy Gillespie and his band in high school, the Ballads, opened for the Temptations. After school, he moved to musical theater and Broadway, performing in “Hair,” which led to runs in “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “The Wiz.” That latter production introduced him to his first wife, future “The Cosby Show” star Phylicia Rashad.
In 1977, French producer Jacques Morali asked him to sing on a collection of disco tracks under the project name the Village People. The sessions went so well that Morali asked Willis to front the group, which adopted campy archetypes of masculinity — cop, cowboy and construction worker among them — in their stage costumes. Paired with bubbly disco grooves and chant-along choruses, the band became gay icons overnight.
In just two years, the band released 1978’s “Cruisin,” which featured “Y.M.C.A.,” a hit that reached No. 1 in 17 countries. The same year, the band released “Macho Man,” which included the title track and “Key West.”
The next year, they put out “Live and Sleazy” and “Go West,” which featured “In the Navy,” “I Wanna Shake Your Hand” and the title track, a nascent gay club hit that the Pet Shop Boys later covered. Willis had mixed feelings about the group’s caricature image, recording but shelving a 1979 solo album, “Solo Man,” until 2015. Willis quit the Village People in 1979 during production of “Can’t Stop the Music,” a Village People film and a financial disaster that led to the band’s dissolution.
Willis admitted to drug problems throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, frustrated with how his time in the Village People kept audiences from taking him more seriously as an artist. He pushed back on perceptions of the band’s gay-coded imagery, saying “Y.M.C.A.” was literally inspired by his observations of life at the recreation center’s San Francisco branch.
After a 2006 court-ordered rehab stint, Willis then married Karen Huff, an attorney who helped him earn back 50% ownership of “Y.M.C.A.” and 12 other Village People songs in the US. Willis made peace with his Village People legacy and rejoined the group in 2017.
In 2020, “Y.M.C.A.” was included in the National Recording Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
President Trump, a longtime fan of the disco ensemble, became the group’s most controversial champion, incongruously playing its music at far-right political rallies.
Willis said in 2020 that “I don’t endorse Trump, I’ve never endorsed Trump, nor has the Village People. We have even asked him basically to even stop playing our music at his rallies. But because of the copyright laws in the United States … he’s able to play our music any time he wants to at any venue because he’s not using it in an incorrect way, so we don’t knock it.”
Yet Willis eventually agreed to perform at President Trump’s second inauguration in 2025. “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,” he wrote on Facebook then. “Our song YMCA is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost.”
President Trump posted on Truth Social that “we loved them and their great and uplifting song.”
“We will think of Victor every time YMCA is played, like today, and all throughout this July Fourth Birthday week,” the President continued.