Roberta Flack: Killing Me Softly With His Song singer dies aged 88
Flack won five Grammys overall, including three for Killing Me Softly, and was nominated eight times, ITV News Entertainment Reporter Rishi Davda has more
US singer Roberta Flack has died aged 88 at home surrounded by family, her publicist has said.
Known for her hits Killing Me Softly With His Song and The Closer I Get to You, Flack became one of the top recording artists of the 1970s and an influential performer long after.
In 2022, the Grammy Award-winning singer announced she had ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and could no longer sing.
She was a classically trained pianist discovered in the late 1960s by jazz musician Les McCann, who later wrote that “her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known.”
Versatile enough to summon the up-tempo gospel passion of Aretha Franklin, Flack often favoured a more reflective and measured approach.
Little is known before her early 30s, Flack became an overnight star when Clint Eastwood used The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face in a pivotal love scene with Donna Mills in his 1971 film Play Misty for Me.
The ballad, featuring Flack’s graceful soprano over soft strings and piano, topped the Billboard chart in 1972 and won a Grammy for Record of the Year.
“The record label wanted to have it re-recorded with a faster tempo, but he said he wanted it exactly as it was,” Flack said in 2018.
“With the song as a theme song for his movie, it gained a lot of popularity and then took off.”
In 1973, she repeated this success with Killing Me Softly With His Song, becoming the first artist to win back-to-back Grammys for Record of the Year.
In the mid-90s, Flack gained renewed attention when the Fugees, featuring Lauryn Hill, released a Grammy-winning cover of Killing Me Softly. She later performed it on stage with the hip-hop group.
Flack’s other hits from the 1970s included the cosy Feel Like Makin’ Love and two duets with her late close friend and former Howard University classmate Donny Hathaway, Where Is the Love and The Closer I Get to You.
Their partnership ended in tragedy.
In 1979, she and Hathaway were working on an album of duets when he suffered a breakdown during recording and later that night fell to his death from his hotel room in Manhattan.
Flack won five Grammys overall, including three for Killing Me Softly, and was nominated eight more times.
In 2020, she received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, with stars like John Legend and Ariana Grande among those praising her.
The late Luther Vandross once toured with Flack as a backing singer before she encouraged him to launch a solo career in the late 1970s.
“I love that connection to other artists because we understand music, we live music, it’s our language,” Flack told songwriteruniverse.com in 2020.
“Through music we understand what we are thinking and feeling. No matter what challenge life presents, I am at home with my piano, on a stage, with my band, in the studio, listening to music. I can find my way when I hear music.”
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