‘Killing Me Softly’ icon Roberta Flack dies, age 88

R&B icon Roberta Flack has died aged 88.

The singer was most widely recognised as a pioneer of the genre, and the iconic voice behind tracks like ‘The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face’, ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ and ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’.

News of her passing was shared today (February 24) by her representative. “We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning,” they wrote in a new statement. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”

An official cause of death has not been shared, although it is worth noting that the singer had been battling ALS for the past three years.

Flack was born in North Carolina in 1937 and raised in Virginia. She began singing at various churches throughout her childhood, before learning piano at age nine and going on to get a full scholarship to Howard University.

After graduating, she began a career as a music teacher and started getting work as a singer in various clubs. It was around the late ‘60s that she made a shift to pop music and famously performed at Mr Henry’s Restaurant on Capitol Hill — getting recognition from the likes of Bill Cosby, Woody Allen and more (via Consequence).

By 1969, Flack had shared her debut album ‘First Take’ with Atlantic Records, and in 1971 she famously starred in the Ghana Independence Day concert film Soul To Soul, which also featured Santana, Ike & Tina Turner and more.

Throughout the ‘70s, her success continued to grow. Her now-classic track ‘The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face’ was notably chosen by Clint Eastwood to feature in his directorial debut Play Misty for Me. It would later go on to win Record Of The Year at the ‘93 Grammys and become her first chart-topping single. She would work with the Hollywood star again in his 1983 film Sudden Impact.

That same year her ‘Killing Me Softly’ album saw her take home Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Performance at the 1974 Grammys and reach the top of the charts again. ‘Feel Like Making Love’ marked another Number One hit, and was released in 1974.

‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ would go on to get more recognition over two decades later, when Fugees dropped their hit cover for ‘The Score’. She would also continue making music up until the late 2010s. Her final album ‘Running’ was shared in 2018, and she also paid homage to The Beatles in 2012 with her covers album ‘Let It Be Roberta’.

Two years later she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2020 ceremony, and went on to announce her amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) diagnosis in 2022. This is a neurodegenerative disease that impacts the nerves in the brain and spinal cord, and sadly left Flack unable to sing.

Her final years saw her work on projects including a children’s book and a documentary about her life. The latter was titled Roberta, and was shared in November 2022, while the children’s book, The Little Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music, arrived the following year.

In total, she was given 13 Grammy nods throughout her career, with the last coming in 1995 for ‘Roberta’, which was nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance (via Variety). She is survived by her son Bernard Wright, who is also a musician.

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