Cowley, falsetto, queer glam on the floor
You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) hit in 1978 at disco’s commercial peak, produced with Patrick Cowley for Sylvester’s Fantasy Records run. Sylvester James Jr., raised in a Pentecostal church in Los Angeles, brought gospel phrasing and an unapologetic queer glam image to the mirrorball circuit. The track opens on synth flicker and a four-on-the-floor kick, then locks into a sustained high vocal that treats the club as a pulpit without soft-pedaling sexuality.
Cowley’s synth work and the hi-NRG pulse made it a San Francisco and international dance staple. Sylvester did not hide gender play or Black queer presence behind coded pronouns. The song functioned as radio hit and community signal at once: sequins, falsetto, and a beat built for all-night floors.
The song is one of those surges of sustained, stylized energy that is disco’s great gift to pop music.
(Robert Christgau, Village Voice, 1978)
Decades on, the cut remains a reference point for disco revival sets and LGBTQ+ pride playlists because the facts are simple: a Black gay star put a church-trained voice on a Patrick Cowley groove and forced mainstream dance radio to play it. That is the inheritance—chart disco that refused to stay closeted.
