With flamboyant costumes and choreography, the group targeted disco’s large gay audience in the late 1970s with camp fantasy characters
1-MIN READ1-MIN ListenAgence France-PressePublished: 7:10pm, 1 Jul 2026Victor Willis, lead singer of the disco group Village People whose hit Y.M.C.A. became a fixture at rallies for US President Donald Trump, has died, his spouse said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
“It is with profound sadness that I must announce the death of my husband, VICTOR WILLIS. Victor passed away on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, as a result of a short, but aggressive illness,” the post on Willis’s official page said.
The Texas-born musician, who was 74, was a co-founder of the Village People and co-wrote hits including Y.M.C.A., In the Navy and Macho Man that swept the world’s dance floors in the late 1970s.
With their flamboyant costumes and choreography, the group became a pop culture phenomenon, targeting disco’s large gay audience with camp fantasy characters of butch builders, bikers, cowboys and soldiers.
Willis left the group in 1980 but joined again in 2017.
He struggled with drug addiction and took a plea deal over cocaine possession in 2006.
