New Delhi, July 2 -- Victor Willis wrote the words to Y.M.C.A. about a real YMCA in San Francisco, men doing pull-ups and swapping stories in a locker room, and he spent the last years of his life watching a president turn the song into something else entirely.

Willis, the founding lead singer of Village People and co-writer of some of disco's most recognizable hits, died Tuesday at 74 of what his wife, Karen Huff Willis, described as a short but aggressive illness, according to a statement from the band and a report from NBC News. He co-wrote Y.M.C.A., In the Navy and Macho Man, songs that turned four minutes of dance-floor choreography into cultural shorthand for nearly five decades.

The timing of his death put an unresolved argument ...