Number 1 With A Bullet: Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song”

Robert Flack - "Killing Me Softly With His Song" (Atlantic, 1973)

Inspired by a Don McLean performance, Roberta Flack‘s biggest hit actually started as “Killing Me Softly With His Blues.”

That’s the name Lori Lieberman gave to the original version of “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” a tune she wrote after seeing Don McLean sing at the Troubadour in L.A. Enlisting the songwriting skills of Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, Lieberman finished the song and recorded it to little, if any, fanfare.

It was only by chance that Roberta Flack heard the song as she was listening to an in-flight recording on a trip from L.A. to New York. Though she loved the song, Flack felt that it wasn’t quite finished: “By the time I got to New York,” she told High Fidelity magazine, “I knew I had to do that song and I knew I had to add something to it.”

“My classical background made it possible for me to try a number of things with it,” she added. “I changed parts of the chord structure and chose to end on a major chord. It wasn’t written that way.”

It took Flack several months to achieve her desired goal but in the end her perfectionist ways worked in her favor. Released in January 1973, it debuted at #54. Ensuing weeks saw it at numbers 34, 15 and five before it landed at #1 for five weeks in February ’73.

Lyrics

Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words, killing me softly with his song
I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him to listen for a while

Get the rest on MetroLyrics »

 

 

Need even more Michael Verity? Check out MichaelVerity.com.