Loleatta Holloway: more than a voice

Loleatta Holloway, who has died aged 64, leaves behind a legacy as the finest diva in dance music history. The sheer power of the notes her lungs expelled turned mere singing into an emotional tempest, huffing and puffing until she blew the house down.

Her most famous track is Love Sensation, whose vocal line and jazz-inflected pianos were sheared off and airlifted into Black Box's Ride on Time; Holloway successfully sued them for their shameless unauthorised sampling. She smiled more favourably on Mark Wahlberg, reusing its vocal hook when appearing with him on Good Vibrations, and making his Marky Mark take on jacking house surprisingly credible.

Listening to Love Sensation today, or its excellent Shep Pettibone re-edit, the level of emotion is still shocking. Holloway sounds on the brink of madness, romping over a demented melodic topography and constantly unleashing her secret weapon, an almost polyphonic yell that acts as a war cry for love's constant battle. Compare her to, say, Fergie, submerged under digital trickery or colourlessly emoting when not; Holloway is a woman whom you suspect would never meet you halfway on anything.

Grace Dent recently noted in The Guardian how the winking sauciness of Blind Date has morphed into the straight-talking grot of Take Me Out, and a similar thing has occurred in divadom. While Rihanna bluntly announces: "chains and whips excite me", Holloway is far wittier. Delivered as if receiving some unexpectedly awesome oral sex, she sings: "you get down, you get down to the real nitty gritty".

Elsewhere in her back catalogue, her late-90s take on Shout to the Top with Fire Island is ludicrously empowering. Like Candi Staton, she started out with funk-filled tales of cheatin' men, such as Only a Fool; and when Whitney Houston needed a diamond-tough statement after her 'lost' years, she effectively covered Holloway's We're Getting Stronger with Million Dollar Bill.

Paradoxically, considering their vocal might, house and disco divas were often ciphers, mere tits-and-ass content delivery systems for the male production community. It's a trend that has continued right the way through UKG, trance and many other dance forms. Holloway's voice, however, full of strident indignation and volcanic sexuality, is always the dominant force in her songs, going toe to toe with even the most pounding pianos and lushest orchestras.

But the key to her appeal is that she doesn't push herself too far to the front. The pleasure of listening to divas like Whitney or Rihanna is that it's an aspirational experience – women want to be them, men want to be with them. Holloway is a different proposition: a collective experience, of mutual understanding and shared joy. She takes the utopian ideals of clubland – sex, community, abandon – and massively amplifies them back at the dancers, singing to each one of them and the club as a whole. As her voice surges onto and fills the dancefloor, it really does feel like we're all getting stronger.