Day 341: Sylvester - All I Need

You know what time it is, it’s the best day of the week, it’s time for another Disco Friday. Since we’re nearing the tail end of the year-long project, I thought I’d go for another album by one of my favourite disco artists I’ve discovered in the course of this project. Sylvester’s Step II has been one of my favourite things I’ve listened to on a Disco Friday, so let’s see if All I Need is as good.

Album cover courtesy of Megatone Record

All I Need was released in 1982 as Sylvester’s sixth studio album, and later reissued as Do Ya Wanna Funk after the song became a hit. “Do Ya Wanna Funk” was Sylvester’s collaboration with legendary disco producer Patrick Cowley, who Sylvester had worked with in the ‘70s, but they stopped working together after they had a big falling out. Then Cowley became ill and hospitalised with what they later discovered was AIDS. Sylvester came to the hospital and said “Get your ass up out of bed so we can go to work” and started taking him to the studio on the back of his moped. They made “Do Ya Wanna Funk” as their final song, as Cowley died a few months after.

Just as I suspected, All I Need is great. I say this as a disco lover, but often as a genre, it’s just not that cool – that’s not a bad thing, it’s one of the things I love about it, give me a super cheesy and incredibly dated disco tune with some lady moaning comically on top and I’m sold every single time. But the Sylvester variety of disco is actually just so cool, he reminds me of Prince quite a lot of the time, especially on songs like “All I Need”.

If I was trying to convert a disco non-believer, I’d put on Sylvester. Honestly, disco rules, and Sylvester especially so – with 1980s pharmaceuticals and not a cell phone camera in sight, partying in the days when this came out must have been heaven. I didn’t love this one as much as I loved Step II, but it’s a great album nonetheless. All I Need gets an 8.5/10.