The surprise about
Sylvester's 1977 debut for
Fantasy Records is how utterly conventional it sounds after hearing later
Hi-NRG disco breakthroughs like
"You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)." The outstanding opening track, a seven-minute cover of
Ashford & Simpson's
"Over and Over," features horn fills in the style of
the Blackbyrds and the album's most propulsive
disco beat, but after that classic the album quickly becomes a much more conventional
R&B/
soul record. The horns stay prominent on just about every track, perhaps to reassure those who wanted
Fantasy to remember its
jazz and
soul roots in the face of this new
disco onslaught. Perhaps, surprisingly, the best and most emotionally honest-sounding tracks on the album are ballads like
"I Tried to Forget You" and
"Tipsong." In light of
"Over and Over" and its dancefloor success, 1978's
Step II goes full-force into
disco with the classics
"Dance (Disco Heat)" and
"You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)," two falsetto anthems that would prove particularly influential in the U.K., where the mix of
pop hooks and
disco rhythms would be a key influence on the burgeoning new romantic movement as well as the club-based
Hi-NRG scene. Although much of the rest of the album sticks closer to the
soul ballad fixation of the debut,
Step II is rightfully considered a
disco masterpiece. ~ Stewart Mason