It's fun to sing at the Y

YMCA is a popular karaoke song. Who'da thunk? When I first realized this, it was a bit of a surprise. I need to explain a bit about rock history to understand why I say that.

Back when I was 16, my music genre was "rock", as exemplified by groups like Styx, Boston, Pink Floyd, Kansas, Jethro Tull, the Doors, and the Moody Blues. Today, this genre has become known as "classic rock". Don't get me wrong, I listened to some folk music and some Motown, and once in a while some earlier rock and roll... but my favorite was the classic rock.

I loved the depth of the music. It was not the standard four chord rock. There were instruments other than guitars and drums. The music was more freeform. The music was somewhere between symphony and rock and jazz.

And this was the music of the day.

In 1977, this changed. Donna Summer burst onto the scene. The Bee Gees became superstars (along with John Travolta) with the movie "Saturday Night Fever". And discos popped up everywhere.
At the time, I joked that there had been only one disco song ever written. It goes like this: THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP... There were a lot of different recordings of this one song. Different artists, different words, a little different take on the melody, but the same song: THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP...

My music genre was getting muscled out. The musical intricacies, the rhythm change ups, the non-standard instrumentation, and complex harmonies -- all gone. All replaced by THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP... I didn't own a T shirt that said "Disco Sucks", but I would have worn one if someone gave me one.

The Village People made their own recording of this one disco song. Yeah, they dressed up funny and did some stuff that was kind of a dance, but it was that same song.

My opinions have moderated a bit through the years. Today, I can hear "That's the way ..." on the radio and sing along on the  "uh huh uh huh", and not feel that I am a traitor to my genre. It might even bring back a fleeting memory of the discos that I visited back in 1977, the year I graduated from college. Some of those disco-related memories are actually pleasant.

But still, when I first heard YMCA done in karaoke, it was a surprise because it brought me back to the Disco Sucks era of music. The rest of the crowd seemed oblivious to this desecration of the ultimate musical form of the 20th century. People were having fun cuz everyone knew the words to the chorus and they knew to make a Y, an M, a C, and an A with their arms above their body.

And that brings me around to the point of this blog. Last month, the YMCA went through rebranding and emerged with only one letter intact. They are now the Y.

No longer will people have to fumble as they go from the letter Y to the M, with the arms bent downward to the head. No longer will people need to get momentarily confused by whether the C points this way or that. And that last part... where your bring your hands together to make the A?  I always messed that up.

No more will people get lost in the complex intricacies of that dance, because now it's just the Y. "It's fun to stay at the Y - - -. It's fun to stay at the Y - - -." Please try to remember to sing it correctly, without the MCA.