What: The Village People (opening act the Timebenders)
Where: Mary Winspear Centre, Sidney
When: Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $78.75, 250-656-0275 or online at marywinspear.ca
The lead singer of the Village People insists everyone does it a little differently.
Ray Simpson is, of course, talking about how people dance to the song Y.M.C.A.
A global chart-topper in 1979, Y.M.C.A. is a song everybody knows. It’s still played regularly at everything from backyard wedding receptions to arena sporting events. It’s a disco classic, a gay anthem and (let’s face it) the campiest guilty pleasure this side of Liberace’s candelabra.
The Y.M.C.A. dance is a key factor in the song’s enduring popularity. As names of the letters are sung out during the chorus, dancers sign the shape of each letter with their arms and hands.
Simpson, 60, who’s the uniformed cop in the Village People, says the band didn’t invent the dance. The movements were first done by young audience members on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in 1979, when the Village People performed on the program.
“They’re the ones that actually came up with that. And we stole it. We’re not shy,” Simpson said Monday from his New Jersey home.
The dance soon became a national — and even international — phenomenon. In 2008, more than 44,000 people did the Y.M.C.A. dance when the Village People played a football game in El Paso. The feat even made Guinness World Records.
The weird thing, says Simpson, is how many minor variants there are to the Y.M.C.A. dance. To keep the movements uniform, the Village People teach each crowd how to do it their way.
“You’d be surprised how many ways you can do those four simple movements,” Simpson said with a laugh.
He’s been with the band 35 years, but Simpson isn’t the Village People’s first cop-clad singer. The original was Victor Willis, who co-wrote not only Y.M.C.A. but Macho Man and In the Navy. (Last year, after years of legal proceedings, a court awarded Willis his share of the copyright to Y.M.C.A. and other songs he’d co-written.)
Simpson, who has an English degree and once considered being a teacher, started off as a backup singer for the Village People. Previously he’d sung for projects initiated by his famous sister and brother-in-law, Valerie Simpson and Nickolas Ashford. Ashford and Simpson wrote such hits as Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and Ain’t Nothin’ Like the Real Thing.
While the tunes are catchy, one might think singing Y.M.C.A., Macho Man and In the Navy wouldø become tedious after a decade or two. Not so, says Simpson. While the songs remain the same, the audiences do not.
“If you’re dealing with a different audience, it can be completely different. You may sing a song and they may inspire you to do it in a different way.”
As for what makes a 1970s anthem like Y.M.C.A. so perennially enduring, Simpson admits he is mystified.
“I don’t have a clue. I know the fact we still sing the songs, it helps keep them alive. But the actual ‘why’ of how things happen, especially with music, you never know why,” he said.