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OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
1:05 PM – Monday, February 24, 2025
Roberta Flack, who topped the Billboard charts with singles like “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Killing Me Softly with His Song” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love” — has died at 88-years-old.
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The Grammy award-winning singer passed away suddenly on Monday.
Flack previously suffered a stroke in 2016, and two years later, she collapsed during a concert. Later, in 2022, she received a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease, also referred to as “ALS.” The diagnosis of ALS “made it impossible to sing and not easy to speak,” according to Suzanne Koga, Flack’s manager at the time. “But it will take a lot more than ALS to silence this icon.”
According to Flack’s publicist, Elaine Schock, she died at home with her family by her side. She also noted that Flack passed due to complications from ALS, the Washington Post reported.
“Roberta broke boundaries and records,” stated an obituary shared by Schock. “She was also a proud educator. She was unlike any other popular vocalist that preceded her. Indeed, Roberta Flack couldn’t be contained simply by categories. She sang reveries as much as exclamations, and yet her stillness electrified the soul. In time, the style she created became known as ‘quiet storm.’ It was a fitting term not just for her sensibility but also for her effect.”
Notably, the song was covered by the popular R&B-funk-hip hop group Fugees in 1996, featuring lead vocals by singer Lauryn Hill. The late Frank Sinatra is also one of many other artists who covered the song after Roberta Flack’s version came out.
Flack rose higher to fame when actor-director Clint Eastwood included the 1969 song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his 1971 film “Play Misty for Me.”
In 1972, the artist’s song topped the Billboard chart and won the Grammys’ record of the year.
“The record label wanted to have it re-recorded with a faster tempo, but he said he wanted it exactly as it was,” Flack told The Associated Press in 2018. “With the song as a theme song for his movie, it gained a lot of popularity and then took off.”
In 1973, she also made history by becoming the first artist to win record of the year twice in a row with “Killing Me Softly.”
“Fresh from her Grammy win for ‘The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face,’ Roberta Flack was struck by [Lori Lieberman’s] ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ when she heard it by chance on an airplane. From there, Flack’s relationship with the song took off: After releasing her version as the title track on her 1973 album Killing Me Softly, Flack watched the song soar to #1 on the charts and stay there for five non-consecutive weeks—longer than any other single in 1973. She went on to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, along with Best Pop Vocal Performance.”
Flack recorded a few more popular singles as well, such as “Where Is the Love,” “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” and “The Closer I Get to You.”
Flack grew up in Arlington, Virginia, after being born in North Carolina. Her skills on the piano earned her a full scholarship to Howard University by the time she was just fifteen years old. During her twenties, the R&B singer taught music to children at middle schools in the Washington, D.C., area. Her first album, “First Take,” was released in 1969 — the same year she signed with Atlantic Records.
“I wanted to be successful, a serious all-round musician,” Flack told The Telegraph outlet in 2015. “I listened to a lot of Aretha, the Drifters, trying to do some of that myself, playing, teaching.”
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