LISTEN: The Village People’s mobile anthem to safe sex
Village People (1977), Macho Man and Cruisin (1978)—the popularity of the Village People began to drift somewhere around the group’s fourth album Go West (1979).
Yes, they were absolutely bonafide stars who had successfully parlayed disco-dicked queer culture and sexual innuendo into success, which culminated into the film and musical soundtrack Can’t Stop the Music (1980), but the group began to become a parody of itself as its members shifted.
At the film box office, Can’t Stop the Music was a failure, but the reception to the film and the accompanying nostalgia of the group spoke to a popular attitude held at the time: disco was dead.
And as the likes of Madonna and Prince began to usher in a new contemporary sound, the hedonism of the ’70s was being stamped out by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
