President-elect Donald Trump made the disco classic “YMCA” a staple at his rallies during his past two campaigns. And new data shows that, much like Trump’s political fortunes, interest in the song is on the upswing.
The 1978 hit by the Village People has had a busy month four decades later, with skyrocketing search interest on Google, a tripling of measured listenership on the song-tracking site last.fm, and, finally, the topping of one Billboard sales chart for the first time.
Trump began dancing to the song at the end of his rallies in 2020, bouncing to the beat with his fists poking at the air.
“You know what gets ‘em rockin? YMCA,” Trump said on a podcast in 2022. “YMCA gets people up and it gets them moving.”
The dance caught on outside of Trump’s political orbit this year, when athletes began mimicking Trump’s moves when celebrating on the field.
The song, from the Village People’s album “Cruisin’”, is purportedly about the nonprofit Young Men’s Christian Association and the community centers it runs in many U.S. cities. The song’s lyrics run thick with double entendres on gay male life and has since become a gay anthem — although Village People member Felipe Rose told HuffPost in 2014 that there’s nothing gay about the song, and people who spent time at the YMCA in Manhattan, which reportedly inspired the song, said that what happened in that building was more complex than what the lyrics imply.
The song is also a staple at sporting events around the country, including in New York, where Trump’s beloved New York Yankees play the song during the sixth inning of home games.
Data from Google Trends shows more searches for the song this month than in any month in the search engine’s published records.
