
When Jason King was a kid, his family had a compilation full of disco hits from K-tel records in their music collection. On that tape was the song You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) from the singer Sylvester. Jason-who is a musician, a nationally recognized journalist, and the Chair of NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music-didn't know much about Sylvester at the time. In fact, he wasn't even sure if Sylvester's signature falsetto belonged to a man or a woman. But he knew it was his favorite song on the tape.
Sound Barrier host Jason King.
As an adult, Jason's love of this song led him to learn more about Sylvester, an openly gay Black man living in 1970s America who dressed in drag and challenged gender conventions with a fervor few other musicians possessed. Though he wasn't a household name, Sylvester's innovative sound and persona paved the way for countless artists-particularly LGBTQ artists-to express themselves freely. And this is a big reason why Jason's appreciation for Sylvester has made its way into his journalistic and academic work.
This has set the stage for the launch of Sound Barrier, our new documentary podcast hosted by Jason that aims to explore artists who have made pioneering contributions to music and culture. Fittingly, he has turned his focus to Sylvester for season one-exploring not only the singer's life, but also the influence Sylvester has continued to have on BIPOC and LGBTQ artists after his death.
In celebration of Black Music Month and Pride Month, For the Record caught up with Jason to talk about his journey creating Sound Barrier, Sylvester's one-of-a-kind music career, and why Sylvester is more relevant today than ever before.
The description for Sound Barrier labels Sylvester as a musician who is perhaps even more relevant today than in the '70s and '80s. In your eyes, what makes him so relevant right now? Sylvester is someone who was an intersectional figure before intersectionality was a buzzword. He's somebody who was operating at the nexus of being Black and being gay and being femme when those things were still considered stigmas-they still are to some degree. But they were certainly considered stigmas at that time.
He was just unapologetically himself despite incredible pressure from his record label to be more straight and more normative. Every time he met that pressure, he pushed back and he became more himself. And so I think he's instructive to contemporary generations of how to be yourself at all costs.
Are there any particular eras or aspects of Sylvester's life that you've focused on over the course of the season? It covers him chronologically in every aspect, but one thing we take a close look at is his musicianship. I feel like Sylvester is often celebrated for being a cultural icon, which he was, and for being a pioneer around issues of identity. But he did it through the lens of music, and he was a phenomenal musician.
I really wanted to talk about the way his career evolved over the years and to push back against the narrative that Sylvester's best work was in the '70s and everything that came after that was an afterthought. I think his '80s work is some of his most creative work, particularly given that he had an AIDS diagnosis in the late '80s and was still continuing to make really important music.
Sound Barrier features many notable LGBTQ artists who span multiple generations. How did you decide on these featured guests? Well, we knew that we wanted to have scholars who really studied and thought about Sylvester's life. So that includes Joshua Gamson, who wrote the biography of Sylvester, The Fabulous Sylvester.
We knew that we wanted to have his collaborators, his friends, and people who knew him at that time who could testify about who he was: singers like Jeanie Tracy and Martha Wash, as well as Patrick Cowley, who was an innovator with synthesizers. And then we knew that we wanted to also have the younger artists who may not have known Sylvester, who may not be vested connoisseurs necessarily, but who have been touched in some way by Sylvester's music or his spirit.
So I reached out to people whom I felt were in Sylvester's musical genealogy. That included Alex Newell, famous for their work on Broadway and Glee; that included Billy Porter, who I think is very outspoken about how much of a role Sylvester played in Billy's own self-acceptance-before and after he won his Tony award for Kinky Boots; that included the vocalist and rapper Mykki Blanco, who's maybe not directly in Sylvester's vocal tradition but is very much influenced by Sylvester in other ways.
In reporting out season one of Sound Barrier, the team managed to unearth some never-before-heard demos and interviews from Sylvester. How were you able to discover these, and what do they reveal about him? I thought I knew a lot about Sylvester, but I learned a lot through this series about what made him tick, his musical choices, his aesthetic, and the pressures that he faced.
And having heard Sylvester's unreleased early 1970s demos before, I felt like one of the things I could bring to this series was to connect our team to Universal Music Group executive Harry Weinger, who has been in possession of these unheard recordings. They were produced by Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, and they're fascinating because they capture Sylvester as a work in progress who was really figuring out who he was and how to be his most authentic self. And he did that in these first recordings.
In one of the demos, he's singing Superstar, which is a song that's incredibly famous because it's a Leon Russell song that was performed by the Carpenters and later by Luther Vandross. Sylvester is doing maybe the first cover of it, but it's ast
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
07/08/2025
July 8 2025, 22:30 (PDT) Tata Motors & Dolby Bring Dolby Atmos to Harrier.ev, R...
12/07/2025
As the death toll continues to mount, with at least 120 killed and more than 170 people still missing on July 10 from devastating Texas floods, a number of broa...
12/07/2025
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., and MIAMI -DirecTV and TelevisaUnivision have signed a deal that will make the ad-supported premium subscription tier of ViX, ViX Premium wi...
11/07/2025
PARK CITY, UTAH, July 11, 2025 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the 11 producers chosen for its annual Producers Labs, returning to Ucross Fou...
11/07/2025
If you've ever wondered what might be playing in Clark Kent's headphones...
11/07/2025
L3Harris Technologies President of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Jason Lambert and General Manager of L3Harris Waco facility Sean Ling held a ce...
11/07/2025
ARLINGTON, Va. WETA, the flagship public media station in the national capital area, has launched WETA+, a new streaming service tailored for the local Washingt...
11/07/2025
The Federal Communications Commission has emerged as one of the central players in the broadcast TV landscape in 2025, with its deregulatory policies sparking h...
11/07/2025
Calrec will introduce usability, customization and system enhancements across its entire range of Argo consoles during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Amsterda...
11/07/2025
LONDON Encompass Digital Media said it will support live and on-demand viewing of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup across multiple global regions for sports enterta...
11/07/2025
Two-thirds of broadcast engineers reaped the benefits of a pay raise within the last year....
11/07/2025
CARY, N.C. SmallHD has launched the Quantum 27, a new 26.5-inch Quantum-Dot OLED monitor designed to deliver postproduction image quality in a compact, set-frie...
11/07/2025
The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau and Tegna have entered into a consent decree that will settle an investigation into the accidenta...
11/07/2025
WASHINGTON Following news in early July that Paramount had settled President Donald Trump's lawsuit, Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Ben Ray Luj n (D-N...
11/07/2025
Model/Actriz Performs Lead Single Cinderella on The Late Show with Stephen Colbe...
11/07/2025
Behind the Mic: Amazon Prime Preps for First Season of NBA Action; MSG Networks ...
11/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Suite Studios' Craig Hering on Adapting to Client...
11/07/2025
2025 SVG Content Management Forum Breaks Down AI's Impact, Continued Transit...
11/07/2025
A Journey HOME: University of Nebraska's HuskerVision Goes IP Leaders from the HuskerVision and Lawo share their IP learnings By SVG Staff
Friday, July 1...
11/07/2025
CMSI, Remote Picture Labs, Ace ESPN's Cloud-Based Editing Efforts for Wimble...
11/07/2025
Netflix Enters the Live-Boxing-Production Ring for Round 2 With Historic Taylor-...
11/07/2025
Back to All News
Too Hot to Handle: Italy Is Coming on July 18 Only on Netflix
Entertainment
11 July 2025
GlobalItaly
Link copied to clipboard
July 11, 20...
11/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Will Release Death Inc. Seasons 1, 2 and 3
Entertainment
11 July 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
Season 1
Season 2
Se...
11/07/2025
AI and Multimedia Authenticity Standards Collaboration launches two papers to guide the future of AI integration, today at the AI for Good Global Summit
The...
11/07/2025
Ceramics - the humble mix of earth, fire and artistry - have been part of a global conversation for millennia.
From Tang Dynasty trade routes to Renaissance pa...
10/07/2025
The current holder of the prestigious Thomson Foundation Young Journalist of the Year Award has been forced to stop reporting over fears for her safety in Afgha...
10/07/2025
Spotify is turning up the volume on Australian music with a multipronged initiative designed to highlight the dominance of Australian artists on the global stag...
10/07/2025
This is not a drill: Oasis is back on the road-marking its first live performanc...
10/07/2025
The music industry depends on fresh ideas, bold voices, and emerging talent. Yet across the U.K., too many young musicians lack the space to develop their craft...
10/07/2025
NEW YORK - July 10, 2025 - Nielsen, the global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics, today announced that it appointed Richard Pacheco as head of ...
10/07/2025
Local newscasts don't exist in a vacuum. News directors and station management constantly evaluate what's working, what isn't and perhaps most impor...
10/07/2025
Lawo has announced that Stuttgart Media University (Hochschule der Medien, HdM) has comprehensively modernized its central recording studio after selecting an I...
10/07/2025
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has opened early-bird registration for the Media Technology Summit, which will take place in a ne...
10/07/2025
NASHVILLE, Tenn. TNDV Television has launched Aspiration 35, a new version of its 40-foot Aspiration truck reimagined for cinematic multicamera productions....
10/07/2025
BURBANK, Calif. Key Code Education, a provider of instructor-led postproduction training, is growing its curriculum with new programs for beginner and intermedi...
10/07/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. Actus Digital will demonstrate how broadcasters can transform compliance monitoring from a necessary expense into a strategic revenue driver at...
10/07/2025
The Federal Register has published a summary of the Federal Communications Commission's Public Notice seeking comments on its ownership rules that lists a d...
10/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Presents the Official Trailer for SuperestarPlay Video
Play Video
Entertainment
10 July 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard...
10/07/2025
In the race to understand our planet's changing climate, speed and accuracy are everything. But today's most widely used climate simulators often strugg...
10/07/2025
As one of the world's largest emerging markets, Indonesia is making strides toward its Golden 2045 Vision - an initiative tapping digital technologies and...
10/07/2025
10 Jul 2025
VEON and Cohen Circle Secure Investor Commitments for Kyivstar Listing Kyiv, New York, Dubai, and Philadelphia - July 10, 2025 - VEON Ltd. (Nasdaq:...
10/07/2025
5G for all? What the DFL's use of Easy5G and RefCam could mean for events in...
10/07/2025
Save the Date: PGA TOUR Studios Welcomes SVG Remote Production Summit on Oct 14-...
10/07/2025
Cloud on the Road: How Remote-Production-Service Providers Are Adapting to a New...
10/07/2025
Seattle Kraken's Ryan Schaber on the NHL Team Taking Live Game Productions I...
10/07/2025
FOX Sports Reboots Small Control Room in Los Angeles as Hub for Vertical-First P...
10/07/2025
SVG Sit-Down: MSE's Zach Leonsis, ViewLift's Rick Allen Go Deep on Joint...