Farewell To Roberta Flack, The 5-Time Grammy Winner Behind The Power Ballad 'Killing Me Softly'

'Killing Me Softly With His Song' made Roberta Flack the first artist in history to win two back-to-back Grammys for Record of the Year.

American singer and pianist Roberta Flack has passed away at the age of 88. With a voice that could break your heart and put it back together in the span of a single song, Flack was a master of intimacy in music.

Born on February 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and raised in Arlington, Virginia, Flack was a classically trained pianist long before she became an R&B and soul icon. She earned a music scholarship to Howard University at just 15, making her one of the youngest students ever admitted. While she initially had ambitions of becoming a concert pianist, it was in the world of jazz and soul (where her classical training met the raw expressiveness of Black American music) that she found her true calling.

Flack’s breakthrough came in 1972 when Hollywood actor-director Clint Eastwood handpicked her song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Facefor his film Play Misty for Me.

The track was originally a folk song by Ewan MacColl. It was reimagined by Flack as a slow, aching meditation on love. It climbed the charts and won the Grammy for Record of the Year, cementing her as a major force in music. It also set the tone for her signature style: songs that didn’t rush, that allowed emotions to breathe, that felt like whispers in the dark.

The hits kept coming. In 1973, Killing Me Softly With His Songmade Flack the first artist in history to win back-to-back Grammys for Record of the Year. The song (later made famous again by The Fugees) was about the sheer, overwhelming power of music. It’s poetic that Flack, an artist so skilled in conveying emotion, would sing about being emotionally devastated by someone else’s song. The track remains one of the great love letters to music itself.

Flack’s duets with Donny Hathaway Where Is the Love, The Closer I Get to Youare now timeless. Their chemistry was undeniable, their harmonies effortless. Hathaway’s tragic death in 1979 was a devastating blow, but Flack carried on, proving her versatility by branching into pop and R&B in the 1980s with hits like Tonight, I Celebrate My Lovewith Peabo Bryson.

Beyond her music, Flack was a barrier-breaker in an industry that rarely made space for black women on their own terms.

She wasn’t just a vocalist, she was a classically trained musician, a producer and a songwriter in her own right. Later in life, she became an advocate for music education, working to provide opportunities for young artists, ensuring the next generation could find their own voices as she had found hers.

Flack died peacefully of age-related conditions, surrounded by her family and friends at age 88. This great artist gave us songs for a lifetime, and in them, she will always be alive.