Roberta Flack: Legendary Singer and Music Icon Dies at 88

Image credits: Harold Filan/AP

Roberta Flack, the Grammy-winning singer best known for her celebrated interpretations of romantic ballads like “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” as well as her professional collaborations and social activism, has died, according to a statement from her publicist. She was 88. Flack died Monday at her home, surrounded by her family, after several years of health challenges, including a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The progressive condition, often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, made it impossible for Flack to sing, her representatives said at the time.

Flack, however, had already long-cemented her legacy as one of the defining voices of her generation – both as an interpreter of others’ songs and a writer of her own – notching a slew of chart-topping hits and racking up accolades: Over her career, the classically trained daughter of a church organist secured 14 Grammy nominations and won five, including a lifetime achievement award in 2020 and back-to-back Record of the Year wins. Born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and raised in Arlington, Virginia, Flack received classical music training throughout her childhood, starting piano lessons at age 9. By 15, she’d earned a scholarship to Howard University, where she graduated in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in music education.

Flack taught music for a time and wanted to pursue classical music – but found the genre in the 1960s disinclined to welcome her. A voice teacher encouraged Flack to pursue pop music instead, and she spent nights and weekends performing in clubs in Washington, DC, before her big break one night at Mr. Henry’s, where she was discovered by jazz musician Les McCann. He helped land her an audition with Atlantic Records for which, the story goes, she played more than 40 songs over three hours. Her debut record, “First Take,” followed soon after, in 1969. It included her version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” which was written by folk singer Ewan MacColl and helped catapult Flack to superstardom after Clint Eastwood used the recording for his 1971 film, “Play Misty for Me.”

Some of Roberta Flack's notable works include:

• Killing Me Softly With His Song
• The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
• Feel Like Makin' Love
• Set the Night to Music
• Let It Be Roberta

Across her career, Flack also interpreted a wide variety of artists, including Leonard Cohen and The Beatles, and by her fifth solo album, “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” she’d taken over as producer– a role typically filled by men in a male-dominated industry – crediting herself as Rubina Flake, her self-styled alter ego. While her most recognizable songs might have been love songs, Flack never avoided complex issues: She tackled racial injustice on tracks like “Tryin’ Times,” social and economic inequality on “Compared to What” and nodded to the challenges faced by the LGBTQ community in her version of “Ballad of the Sad Young Men.”

That legacy has persisted through the decades, as Flack influenced younger artists like Lauryn Hill and the Fugees – who released their own celebrated version of “Killing Me Softly” in 1996 – along with Lizzo, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande. Whether in protest, romance or the classics, whatever theme Flack approached, “every single song I’ve recorded expressed something deep and personal to me,” she once said. “Each was my singular focus whether in the studio or on the stage.” Flack's most famous song was introduced to a new generation of music fans when Lauryn Hill's hip-hop group The Fugees recorded a Grammy-winning cover of Killing Me Softly, which they would eventually perform on-stage alongside her. It topped the charts around the world in 1996.

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