Content
Taken at face value, its lyrics extol the virtues of the Young Men's Christian Association. In gay culture from which the group sprang, the song was implicitly understood as celebrating the YMCA's reputation as a popular cruising and hookup spot, particularly for the younger gay men to whom it was addressed. However, Victor Willis, Village People lead singer and writer of the lyrics, insists that he did not write YMCA as a gay anthem (Willis is heterosexual). Rather, Willis said he wrote the song as a reflection of young urban black youth fun at the YMCA such as basketball and swimming. That said, Willis has often acknowledged his fondness for double entendre. Willis says that he wrote the song in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Read more about this topic: Y.M.C.A. (song)
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Diety, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.”
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“Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves,
Nor shall not be the last, like silly beggars
Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame
That many have and others must sit there,
And in this thought they find a kind of ease.”
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“Women are angels, wooing;
Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.
That she beloved knows naught that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.
Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:
Achievement is command; ungained, beseech.
Then though my heart’s content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)