Killing Me Softly With His Song — How Roberta Flack Made The Track ...

The story goes that in November 1971, 20-year-old musician Lori Lieberman saw folk singer Don McLean in concert at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. McLean had released his second album, American Pie, only a few weeks earlier, and it had rocketed to the top of the charts (the single “American Pie” wouldn’t be released until the following January). However, Lieberman was so moved by another of his songs, “Empty Chairs”, that she scribbled notes there and then, on a napkin. She had an idea and took it to songwriting team Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, with whom she had signed a management contract a year or so earlier. She was also having an affair with Gimbel.

Lieberman and Gimbel fashioned a song that included a phrase Gimbel was toying with, “Killing me softly”, worthy of Raymond Chandler. Songwriting partner Fox wrote the music. Lieberman recorded the song and it was released in mid-1972. A lovely song, with a great — and surprisingly tricky — tune, an arresting lyric and a stunning title. It went nowhere. Lieberman’s treatment is of its time; it reeks of singer/songwriter; sensitive yes, and she puts her heart into it. But. Something was missing.

Roberta Flack was a classically trained pianist who happened to have a marvellous voice; pure and measured with perfect enunciation. Hearing Lieberman’s recording on a plane flight, she recognised a classic, and now it was she who took notes, trying to pin the song down. Through her friend Quincy Jones, she got in touch with Fox and procured the tune. She first performed the song unrehearsed at a concert in September 1972, to wild response, and was advised by her fellow performer Marvin Gaye not to sing it again until she’d recorded it.

Record it she did. Produced by Joel Dorn, responsible for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, an enormous hit for Flack in 1972 (though recorded in 1969), she provided the missing ingredient. In a masterly performance, that rich, clear voice poured over an echo-soaked backing, the stately rhythm marked by a subdued thunk. There’s also a near-imperceptible build-up, that so many other attempts miss, and a drift into otherworldly wordlessness toward the end as though words can’t suffice. Released in January 1973, it topped charts and won awards.

Don McLean was most surprised when he learnt there was a song about him. His “American Pie” was a rambling elegy to “the day the music died”: February 3 1959, to be precise, when McLean’s teenhood hero Buddy Holly perished in a plane crash. The song was an early contributor to, and influence on, the 1950s nostalgia boom that enveloped the western world in the 1970s: movies such as American Graffiti and That’ll Be the Day and the TV series Happy Days, which, interestingly enough, had its theme tune written by Fox and Gimbel. And by 1974, Flack’s producer Joel Dorn was working with McLean.

“Killing Me Softly with His Song” became an instant standard. Johnny Mathis and Perry Como recorded it in early 1973, when it became “Killing Me Softly with Her Song”, thus immediately disassociating the lyric from its subject.  

Cleo Laine and John Williams (1976). Brilliant singing from Laine, rougher round the edges than Flack. Classical guitarist Williams’s backing keeps its distance, allowing Laine to dig deep into the song.

Precious Wilson and Sky Train (1980). Killing Me Softly with Disco! A refreshing break from the fake Flackery. Good dancer with some nifty drumming.

Luther Vandross (1994). Fantastic, and very very slow. An absolute killer. His singing is a marvel, and in a nice addition to the lyric, he sings, indignantly, “He looked right through me as if I wasn’t there… I was right there!” And he sings “his song”, not “her song”. Good man. Also in 1994, Amii Stewart; still a touch Flacky, but with extra gloss, and some plump sexy sax. These are fine examples of what was known at the time as “bonking music”, smooch pumped to the max.

The Fugees (1996). Hip-hop, sticks to the rules, the women sing, the men talk. Bone-dry snare at the top end, barely suggested bass deep down below, with snatches of interesting aural stuff swimming through the channels between. Though there’s a lot going on, it is not crowded, there’s plenty of space between the layers. They never lose the song’s sense of the ethereal. Very nice.

Rhenda Fearrington (2012) sings beautifully over nothing more than Mike Boone’s deftly handled double bass. Bare-bones perfection.

This is a song that demands a really good singer, its twisting melody containing tripwires that catch the merely competent, never mind the over-confident karaoke-ist. In recent years it has sunk to being the unwise choice of any number of TV talent-show tonsil-twitching mannerists.

What are your memories of ‘Killing Me Softly with His Song’? Let us know in the comments section below.

‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.

Music credits: EMI Catalog (USA); Atlantic Records; Columbia; Performance; LV Records/Epic; RTI; Heart of Our Home Productions

Picture credit: NBCUniversal via Getty Images

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