Search - Village People :: Best of

Al V. (Al) from HOOVER, AL
Reviewed on 4/7/2007...

It's got all the hits.

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Joalice M. from CROYDON, PA
Reviewed on 8/9/2006...

Dance fun music at its best. Historical also.

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Village People... Fight For Your Right

David Wayne | Santee, CA United States | 08/18/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Producer Jacques Morali had a vision for a group that would speak out for the concerns and sensibilities of the (then) unsung Gay populace that was struggling to find a voice in the late 70s. Village People was the end product of that vision. Ads were taken out and actors were hired to play 6 arch-typical (or stereotypical) Gay male types; icons, if you will: A Soldier, A Biker, A Cop, A Construction Worker, A Cowboy, and An Indian. Four songs were constructed and made into an album: Village People. The songs celebrated four hotbeds of Gay male activity: San Francisco, Hollywood, Fire Island, and Greenwich Village. The songs were also trendsetting and funky, filling dance floors from coast to coast. This was the start of The Village People, and all four of those songs are included in this greatest hits package. That first album was really the creative zenith for the group. Lead singer Victor Willis soon took over as the lyricist for the guys, and he came up with a big, big song for the follow-up album. Macho Man gave The Village People their first crossover success, going top 10 on three charts. To me, it was their last song worth a damn, but the Macho Man album did so well, it was ripe to be cloned. And it was cloned not once, but twice, on the albums Cruisin' and Go West. Cruisin' contained the campy "Y.M.C.A.", which topped the charts and spawned the most ridiculous dance sensation since The Freddy! Go West had on it the cartoonish "In The Navy", which was picked up as a recruiting tool by the U.S. Navy, until it was explained to someone of high rank, just what it was about the Navy that The Village People were championing! After a great first album, The Village People's three follow-ups all had one big hit and a host of other songs that we'll magnanimously refer to as "filler." Nothing else they put out as a single ("Ready For The 80s" "Can't Stop The Music" etc.) was even close to being
a hit. But for what it's worth, the hits are here. And since the entire first album is, too, I give the whole thing four stars. If you didn't know that The Village People had a life before "Macho Man," then you need to check out tracks 4, 5, 9, and 11 on this CD. Knowing that this group once had a strong direction, a strong message and a strong groove, it was hard for me to see them commercialized and homogenized, and turned into (what amounts to): An all-male group of male impersonators that masquerades as itself. Can you dig it?"

The Twelve Inch Versions

Gary F. Taylor | Biloxi, MS USA | 05/29/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"THE VILLAGE PEOPLE, of course, were not an organic band; they were deliberately created through a series of auditions and then costumed, choreographed, and unleashed in a collection of images that might have been dreamed up by gay erotic artist Tom of Finnland: muscular with theatrical costumes cut to show every possible bulge, voices that screamed with an excess of testosterone, and both unexpectedly combined with a bouncy beat. The result is a type of musical camp unlike anything heard before or since, and I'm still amazed that they got away with it.Given the somewhat flabbergasting nature of the band, its easy to overlook the music--but strange to say, given the homoerotic slant, their recordings remain a staple of everything from highschool proms to stadium sports events: fun, and funny, and excessive, and extremely memorable. The sound is aggressive, to say the least, and determinedly so, and all the hits are here, and all of it packed with as much unsubtle innuendo as possible. There's "YMCA," and who among us can't jump up and immediately do the contortions required to spell out the letters? Not to mention, of course, speculate on the impact the Village People might have had on that venerable organization. There's the notoriously homoerotic "Macho Man" and the infamous "In The Navy," which poses the musical question 'What am I going to do on a submarine?' Many of the more popular recordings are presented in what is described here as the 12" versions--and what more can we say about that? For the most part, each recording blends over into the next, so the whole thing plays like one long leather bar dance floor mix.THE VILLAGE PEOPLE's music will never be accused of being great art, and their albums were essentially filler collected around a couple of big-sell recordings, so don't feel you're missing out on anything by not buying the original releases--this is the way to go. The perfect recording to liven up a cocktail party, beer bust, biker rally... lots of bass-pounding, wall-shaking fun!"