I think Phil Knight is fooling himself if he thinks he was unusual in his unironic love of the Village People:
I used to love The Village People when I was a kid, but in a way that I suppose is fairly unusual, in that I took them entirely literally. Being only eight or so years old when they first appeared (and perhaps naive even for a kid of that age), I didn’t see the gay subtext (or in their case just plain text) at all. Which meant that I viewed them as a peculiarly big-hearted group who liked to write encouraging, optimistic songs about institutions that were normally overlooked by pop (homeless hostels, the U.S. Navy etc.) and to dress up in cool gear for the pleasure of us kids (because who else could they be dressing like that for?)
If you look at the video on its own it’s camp as hell of course and you wonder how the hell people in the seventies didn’t realise these guys might have ulterior motives to “hang out with all the boys”, but now look at them in their natural context, on Top of the Pops, along with all the Showaddywaddies:
And Real Things:
Really, were the Village People that different from their contemporaries? They fit right in that tradition of light entertainment and inoffensive mums & dads pop music: not too complicated, a catchy tune, lines you can easily sing along too and a wacky dance. In all, they’re not too different from these guys: