Roberta Flack, the US singer behind a string of hits that included Killing Me Softly with His Song, has died at the age of 88.
“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” a statement from her spokesperson read. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”
With her graceful presence, genre-crossing versatility and ability to give voice to the full range of love’s highs and lows, Flack is widely considered one of soul and R&B’s greatest ever artists.
Flack was born in 1937 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, to musical parents. Her mother, Irene, was a church choir organist, meaning Flack was introduced to religious and classical music early on. She began playing the piano aged nine, and by 15 she was admitted to Howard University to study music on a full scholarship, one of the youngest students to be accepted in the school’s history.
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At 19, the new Howard graduate aspired to be an opera singer, before taking up a teaching post in North Carolina. Alongside this work, Flack started performing in nightclubs during evenings and weekends, weaving elements of classical, blues, folk, Motown and pop. Her virtuosity landed her regular spots at venues across Washington, DC; in 1968 a residency at Mr Henry’s Restaurant led Flack to give up teaching for good.
She became acquainted with the soul jazz pianist and singer Les McCann, who in turn introduced her to Atlantic Records; by early 1969 she was recording her debut album, First Take, reportedly in a window of 10 hours. The album documented those years at Henry’s, immortalising the cross-genre collection of tracks she had spent so long practising there. In the liner notes of the original edition, McCann wrote: “Her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known. I laughed, cried, and screamed for more.”
It took until 1971, however, and a placement on the soundtrack to Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me, before her cover of Ewan MacColl’s folk ballad The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face became her first big US hit. It spent six weeks at No 1 in 1972, earning a Grammy award for record of the year in 1973. Killing Me Softly with His Song earned her the same award in 1974, making Flack the first artist to win in two consecutive years (a feat since repeated by U2 and Billie Eilish). That year she scored another US No 1 with Feel Like Makin’ Love.
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Around this time the star began collaborating with the soul legend Donny Hathaway; the pair went on to have two US top-five hits with Where Is the Love and The Closer I Get to You. In 1980, a year after Hathaway’s death, the pair had a posthumous hit in the UK with Back Together Again, which reached number three, though she had her biggest UK hit with her new duet partner, Peabo Bryson: the ballad Tonight, I Celebrate My Love reached number two in 1983.
Flack’s impressive range of influences and collaborators was testament to her multidisciplinary approach and idiosyncratic style. She duetted with Michael Jackson, toured with Miles Davis and covered Leonard Cohen and Laura Nyro.
After her initial success she became associated with the growth of quiet storm, a deep, mature and ruminative offshoot of R&B that later inspired the likes of Erykah Badu, D’Angelo and the Fugees (whose own take on Killing Me Softly would rival Flack’s to be the definitive version). More recently, in 2012, Flack released a string of Beatles covers in an album titled Let It Be Roberta.
She once told a journalist: “What I consider myself is a soulful singer, in that I try to sing with all the feeling that I have in my body and my mind. A person with true soul is one who can take anybody’s song and transcend all the flaws, the technique, and just make you listen.”
After Flack became unwell on stage in 2018, her manager revealed that she had suffered a stroke some years earlier.
Flack married once, in 1966, to the jazz musician Steve Novosel; the couple divorced in 1972. She is survived by their son, the musician Bernard Wright. – Guardian
