"
Killing Me Softly with His Song" is a song composed by
Charles Fox with lyrics by
Norman Gimbel.
The song was written in collaboration with
Lori Lieberman, who recorded the song in late 1971. In 1973 it became a number-one hit in the United States and Canada for
Roberta Flack, also reaching number six in the
UK Singles Chart. The song has been covered by many artists; the version by the
Fugees won the
1997 Grammy for
Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
According to
Lori Lieberman, who performed the original recording in 1971, the song was born of a poem she wrote after experiencing a strong reaction to the
Don McLean song "
Empty Chairs", writing some poetic ideas on a napkin at the
Troubadour Club after seeing him perform the song, and then relating this information to
Norman Gimbel, who took her feelings and converted them into song lyrics. Gimbel passed his lyrics to
Charles Fox, who set them to music.
Don McLean said he had not known that the song described his singing and, when asked about it, said "I'm absolutely amazed. I've heard both Lori's and Roberta's version and I must say I'm very humbled about the whole thing. You can't help but feel that way about a song written and performed as well as this one is."
When Dan MacIntosh (Songfacts) spoke with Charles Fox in 2010, he refuted this story: "I think it's called an urban legend. It really didn't happen that way. Norman Gimbel and I wrote that song for a young artist whose name was Lori Lieberman. Norman had a book that he would put titles of songs, song ideas and lyrics or something that struck him at different times. And he pulled out the book and he was looking through it, and he says, 'Hey, what about a song title, 'Killing Me Softly With His Blues'?' Well, the 'killing me softly' part sounded very interesting, 'with his blues' sounded old fashioned in 1972 when we wrote it. So he thought for a while and he said, 'What about 'killing me softly with his song'? That has a unique twist to it.' So we discussed what it could be, and obviously it's about a song - listening to the song and being moved by the words. It's like the words are speaking to what that person's life is. Anyway, Norman went home and wrote an extraordinary lyric and called me later in the afternoon. I jotted it down over the phone. I sat down and the music just flowed right along with the words. And we got together the next morning and made a couple of adjustments with it and we played it for Lori, and she loved it, she said it reminds her of being at a Don McLean concert. So in her act, when she would appear, she would say that. And somehow the words got changed around so that we wrote it based on Don McLean, and even Don McLean I think has it on his Web site. But he doesn't know. You know, he only knows what the legend is."
According to Gimbel, he was introduced to the
Argentinian-born composer
Lalo Schifrin (then of
Mission: Impossible fame) and began writing songs to a number of Schifrin's films. Both Gimbel and Schifrin made a suggestion to write a
Broadway musical together, and Schifrin gave Gimbel an Argentinean novel—
Hopscotch by
Julio Cortázar—to read as a possible idea. The book was never made into a musical, but in chapter two, the narrator describes himself as sitting in a bar listening to an American pianist friend "kill us softly with some
blues". Gimbel put the phrase in his "idea book" for use at a future time with parentheses around the word "blues" and substituted the word "song" instead.
In a contemporary article from April 5, 1973 in the
New York Daily News, however, Norman Gimbel is quoted and seems to agree with Lieberman's account.
[10] In the article, Lieberman is asked how the song came about and what its inspiration was.
“Don McLean,” she said simply. “I saw him at the Troubadour in LA last year. (“And there he was this young boy / A stranger to my eyes”) I had heard about him from some friends but up to then all I knew about him really was what others had told me. But I was moved by his performance, by the way he developed his numbers, he got right through to me. (“Strumming my pain with his fingers / Killing me softly with his song/ Telling my whole life with his words.”)
Lieberman was the first to record the song in late 1971, releasing it in early 1972.
Helen Reddy has said she was sent the song, but "the
demo... sat on my turntable for months without being played because I didn't like the title".
Roberta Flack first heard the song on an airplane, when the Lieberman original was featured on the in-flight audio program. After scanning the listing of available audio selections, Flack would recall: "The title, of course, smacked me in the face. I immediately pulled out some scratch paper, made
musical staves [then] play[ed] the song at least eight to ten times jotting down the melody that I heard. When I landed, I immediately called
Quincy [Jones] at his house and asked him how to meet Charles Fox. Two days later I had the music." Shortly afterwards Flack rehearsed the song with her band in the
Tuff Gong Studios in
Kingston, Jamaica, but did not then record it.
In September 1972, Flack was opening for
Marvin Gaye at the
Greek Theater; after performing her prepared
encore song, Flack was advised by Gaye to sing an additional song. Flack later said, "I said well, I got this song I've been working on called 'Killing Me Softly...' and he said 'Do it, baby.' And I did it and the audience went crazy, and he walked over to me and put his arm around me and said, 'Baby, don't ever do that song again live until you record it.'"
Released in January 1973, Flack's version spent a total of five non-consecutive weeks at #1 in February and March, more weeks than any other record in 1973, being bumped to number 2 by
The O'Jays' "
Love Train" after four straight weeks atop the
Billboard Hot 100.
Billboard ranked it as the No. 3 song for 1973. In April of 1973, Canadian singer
Anne Murray included her version of "Killing Me Softly" on her album titled
Danny's Song.
Charles Fox suggested that Flack's version was more successful than Lieberman's because Flack's "version was faster and she gave it a strong backbeat that wasn't in the original". According to Flack: "My
classical background made it possible for me to try a number of things with [the song's arrangement]. I changed parts of the chord structure and chose to end on a major chord. [The song] wasn't written that way." Flack plays
electric piano on the track. The bass is played by
Ron Carter, the guitar by
Hugh McCracken and the drums by Ray Lucas. The single appeared as the opening track of the
album of the same name, issued in August 1973.
Flack won the 1973
Grammy Award for Record of the Year and
Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, for the single, with Gimbel and Fox earning the Song of the Year Grammy.
In 1996 a
house remix of Flack's version went to number one on the US dance chart.
In 1999 Flack's version was inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame. It ranked number 360 on
Rolling Stone's list of
The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and number 82 on
Billboard's greatest songs of all time.
Lori Lieberman _ Killing me softly