By Frank Mastropolo

It’s sad to note the passing of Grammy Award-winning singer Roberta Flack. Her representatives said in a statement:

We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning February 24, 2025. She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.

Flack reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with three singles: “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” cementing her legacy in music history.

In an excerpt from the new eBook 100 Greatest Soul Songs, we looked back at Flack’s signature tune, “Killing Me Softly.”

“Killing Me Softly with His Song” was first recorded in the early 1970s by Lori Lieberman, who maintains that the inspiration for the song was her emotional response to hearing Don McLean sing “Empty Chairs” at the Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles. Lieberman said she wrote notes on a napkin, which she read on the phone to lyricist Norman Gimbel. Charles Fox, Gimbel’s songwriting partner, composed the lyrics. 

In the 1970s, Fox and Gimbel agreed with Lieberman’s version of the song’s origin. But by 1976 their relationship soured. In a 2010 interview with Songfacts, Fox called Lieberman’s story an urban legend. 

“Norman had a book where he would write titles of songs—song ideas and lyrics or something that struck him at different times. He pulled out the book and he was looking through it, and he says, ‘Hey, what about a song title, “Killing Me Softly with His Blues”?’ 

“Well, the ‘killing me softly’ part sounded very interesting. So he thought for a while and he said, ‘What about “killing me softly with his song”? That has a unique twist to it.’

“Norman went home and wrote an extraordinary lyric and called me later in the afternoon. I jotted it down over the phone. I sat down and the music just flowed right along with the words. We got together the next morning and made a couple of adjustments with it and we played it for Lori. She loved it; she said it reminded her of being at a Don McLean concert.”

In 2020, Lieberman told the Washington Post that she was not seeking money or official songwriting credit, she just wanted the world to know the correct origin of the song.

Roberta Flack heard “Killing Me Softly” on a plane when Lieberman’s album was featured on an American Airlines in-flight audio program. “Roberta Flack was flying from Los Angeles to New York,” said Fox, “and she heard this song, she heard Lori’s whole album. She was knocked out by the song and she wrote the lyrics down.” 

“The title, of course, smacked me in the face,” Flack recalled in Fox’s book, Killing Me Softly: My Life in Music. “I immediately pulled out some scratch paper, made musical staves, then played the song at least eight to ten times jotting down the melody that I heard.”

“If I have to use one phrase to describe how I feel about the whole experience,” Flack once said, “it would simply be that Love is a Song and an honest giving of feelings and emotions. As a performer, if you can connect to that thought, then whatever the song is, it’s a success. 

“It’s not like I’m trying to sound like somebody else or be somebody else. I’m happy to be Roberta Flack. I’m happy to sound like I do. So that feels good. I mean, I’m very satisfied with that.”

Frank Mastropolo is the author of 100 Greatest Soul Songs.