{"id":2483588,"date":"2026-07-01T15:02:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T15:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2483588"},"modified":"2026-07-01T15:02:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T15:02:23","slug":"victor-willis-founding-lead-singer-of-village-people-dies-at-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/victor-willis-founding-lead-singer-of-village-people-dies-at-74\/","title":{"rendered":"Victor Willis, founding lead singer of Village People, dies at 74"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div data-article-body=\"true\">\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Victor Willis, the founding lead singer of <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/ew.com\/village-people-where-are-they-now-8775354\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:Village People;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Village People&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Village People<\/a>, died on Tuesday. He was 74.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Willis, who co-wrote the disco group&#8217;s hit songs like &#8220;Y.M.C.A.&#8221; and &#8220;Macho Man,&#8221; founded Village People with French producers Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo in 1977. He often performed costumed as a policeman or naval officer alongside original members Alex Briley (G.I.), Felipe Rose (Native American), Mark Mussler (construction worker), Dave Forrest (cowboy), Lee Mouton (leatherman\/biker), and songwriter Peter Whitehead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Village People announced Willis&#8217; death with a statement on their <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/RealVillagePeople\/posts\/pfbid0xxD3DjTy28dcnYWmktG8xG9DkwQS9Toiy5kqeUL6pbJaoqG7YmT9eW8cHY4fpGril\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:Facebook page;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Facebook page&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Facebook page<\/a> Wednesday.<\/p>\n<div class=\"max-md:faux-bleed mb-4 bg-accent\/2 pb-5 md:invisible md:mb-0 md:h-0 md:overflow-hidden md:pb-0\">\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex ad-container\" id=\"_R_2keahlhl8b4lubsnqq5bH1_\">\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\"><![CDATA[#_R_2keahlhl8b4lubsnqq5bH1_ { display: none; }\n@media screen and (max-width: 767.95px) {\n        #_R_2keahlhl8b4lubsnqq5bH1_ { display: flex; }\n        iframe { max-width: 100vw; }\n      }]]><\/style>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;We are profoundly sad to announce the death of VICTOR WILLIS, lead singer of Village People. Victor passed on Tuesday June 30, 2026 of a short but aggressive illness. Privacy is requested.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><em>Entertainment Weekly<\/em> has reached out for further details.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><em>This is a developing story.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Read the original article on <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/ew.com\/victor-willis-founding-lead-singer-of-village-people-dies-12010436\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:Entertainment Weekly;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Entertainment Weekly&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Entertainment Weekly<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Willis, the founding lead singer of Village People, died on Tuesday. He was 74. Willis, who co-wrote the disco group&#8217;s hit songs like &#8220;Y.M.C.A.&#8221; and &#8220;Macho Man,&#8221; founded Village People with French producers Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo in 1977. He often performed costumed as a policeman or naval officer alongside original members Alex [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2483589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[488968,488966,488962,488893,384642,488967,486119,488892],"class_list":["post-2483588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-dave-forrest","tag-felipe-rose","tag-henri-belolo","tag-jacques-morali","tag-lead-singer","tag-mark-mussler","tag-victor-willis","tag-village-people"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Victor-Willis-founding-lead-singer-of-Village-People-dies-at.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2483588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2483590,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483588\/revisions\/2483590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2483589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2483588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2483588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2483588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}