Killing Me Softly with His Song
“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 US and Canada for Roberta Flack, also reaching number six in the UK Singles Chart. The song has since been covered by numerous artists, including the version by the Fugees, which 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 McLean perform the song, then related this information to Gimbel, who took her feelings and put them into words. Then Gimbel passed the words to Fox, who set them to music.
According to Norman Gimbel, Gimbel 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 a parenthesis around the word “blues” and substituted the word “song” instead.
Don McLean said he didn’t know the song described him 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.”
Nevertheless, Fox has repudiated Lieberman’s having input into the song’s creation, saying: “We Gimbel and Fox wrote the song and Lieberman heard it and said it reminded her of how she felt at [a Don McLean] concert. Don McLean didn’t inspire Norman or me to write the song but even Don McLean thinks he’s the inspiration for the song.”
Don McLean supported Lieberman both on his website and from the stage of a concert which he invited her to attend in 2010. However, the matter only reached an unequivocal conclusion when contemporaneous articles from the early 1970s were exhumed, all of them vindicating Lieberman. In an April 5, 1973 article in the Daily News, Norman Gimbel was quoted as follows: “She [Lori Lieberman] told us about this strong experience she had listening to McLean (‘I felt all flushed with fever / Embarrassed by the crowd / I felt he had found my letters / And read each one out loud / I prayed that he would finish / But he just kept right on’). I had a notion this might make a good song so the three of us discussed it. We talked it over several times, just as we did for the rest of the numbers we wrote for this album and we all felt it had possibilities.”
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”.
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.
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 Pop Vocal Performance, Female, 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.
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