Is phone sex the safest sex? At the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, it appeared to be and the Village People gave phone sex a big endorsement with 1985’s “Sex Over the Phone.”
After taking the world by storm with their first few homolicious albums—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.
On the album cover for Sex Over the Phone, the groups updated costumes and new members said a lot. Showcasing their cowboy, cop, construction worker, sailor and Native American personages, fans quickly noted the new members. And with the new members the group was pursuing a more ’80s-esque sound. The album’s titular track “Sex Over the Phone” sounds a lot like their previous hit “Macho Macho.”
But as much as the group tried to pump its previously successful formula into a new decade with a new sound, the song was giving a “party-but-party-responsibly” vibe that people in the U.S. didn’t receive as well as their previous work.
The song itself had plenty of subtext and domtext (see what we did there?) about how safe and convenient it was to just have sex over the phone.
“When I want to take a ride I don’t have to go outside/ I don’t need to dress if I’m feeling lazy,” the lyrics explain. “I can lie there in my bed painting pictures in my head/ I just touch my princess and I go crazy.”
Then in another part, the group proclaims: “Sex over the phone/ This is the part I hate/ Why do they make you wait?/ Here’s where the fevers rise/ Enough to cross my eyes.” And ever-inclusive, it finishes with, “They can be short or tall/They can be white or black.”
What made the Village People so popular was their inclusivity—from their portrayal of the everyman in uniform to their winks and nods to the LGBTQ+ community. But the group never officially came out as a gay group.
“Look, why is it you guys are so hung up with this gay thing! Jeezez, all we ever get from you guys is this ‘Are they or aren’t they?’ crap,” expressed Randy Jones, the cowboy, in a 2015 interview with the Guardian.
A trial over who actually wrote all of the group’s famous hits was underway.
“My Garrd … look, this band has never claimed to be a gay band. Why do you suggest we have to be? It’s not so goddamn important who I go to bed with, is it? Village People is a disco band, OK?”
In short, according to Jones, everyone should just enjoy the group’s music for what it is. Although the Village People attempted to reboot in 2019 with new members for a celebration of disco tour, helmed by original member and songwriter Victor Willis (the cop), the pandemic quickly put the kibosh on a potential comeback.
Yet we will always have the group’s gloriously homoerotic videos to remember just how forward-thinking the group was.
Grab your phone and listen to “Sex Over the Phone” below.
Even better was the energy you could feel from a live performance of the song.
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Kangol2
Not one of their best, though the message is a good one.