oberta Flack, the Grammy-winning soul singer known for romantic ballads like “Killing Me Softly With His Song” as well as professional collaborations and social activism, has died, according to a statement from her publicist.
She was 88.
Flack died Monday at her home, surrounded by her family, her publicist Elaine Schock told CNN. Her death came after years of health problems, including a diagnosis announced in late 2022 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The progressive condition, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, left Flack unable to sing, her publicists said at the time.
Still, Flack cemented her legacy as one of the defining voices of her generation—both as an interpreter of others’ songs and a songwriter of her own—creating a string of chart-topping hits and winning numerous awards: Over the course of her career, the daughter of a classically trained church organist earned 14 Grammy nominations and won five, including a lifetime achievement award in 2020 and two consecutive Record of the Year awards.
Questlove, drummer for The Roots, musical director for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” and filmmaker, paid tribute to Flack.
“Thank you Roberta Flack,” he captioned a throwback photo of the late artist. “Rest in melody.”
Born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and raised in Arlington, Virginia, Flack was classically trained throughout her childhood, starting piano lessons at age 9. By age 15, she had won a scholarship to Howard University, where she graduated in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in music education.
Flack had taught music for a while and wanted to pursue classical music – but she found the genre unwelcoming in the 1960s.
“One of the troubles of being a black female musician is that people push you into a corner and tell you to sing soul,” she once told TIME. “I’m a serious artist. I feel a kinship with people like Arthur Rubinstein and Glenn Gould. If I can’t play (20th-century orchestral composer Bela) Bartok when I want to play Bartok, then nothing else matters.”
A voice teacher encouraged Flack to pursue pop music instead, and she spent nights and weekends performing at clubs in Washington, D.C., before getting her big break one night at Mr. Henry’s, where she was discovered by jazz musician Les McCann. He helped her get an audition with Atlantic Records, where the story goes that she played more than 40 songs in three hours. “I was nervous and excited, and I still am,” she told Philadelphia Weekly decades later, “but it was all a completely new experience, and I probably sang too many songs.” Her debut album, “First Take”, followed soon after, in 1969. The album included her version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, written by folk singer Ewan MacColl and helped catapult Flack to superstardom after Clint Eastwood used the recording for his 1971 film “Play Misty for Me”. The following year, the album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying at No. 1 for six weeks and winning Record of the Year at the 1973 Grammy Awards.
By that time, Flack had already established herself, having released her second follow-up album, “Chapter Two,” as well as the album “Quiet Fire” and a recording with Donny Hathaway, who became a close collaborator before his death in 1979. Together, they won another Grammy in 1973 for their duet, “Where Is the Love.”
1973 also saw Flack release her album, “Killing Me Softly,” featuring the title track, “Killing Me Softly with His Song”—another smash hit that spent five weeks atop the Billboard charts. It would win her two more Grammys in 1974, for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Female Artist.
Throughout her career, Flack also interpreted for a variety of artists, including Leonard Cohen and the Beatles, and by her fifth solo album, “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” she had taken on the role of producer—a role typically held by men in a male-dominated industry—and dubbed herself Rubina Flake, her self-titled name.
social and economic equality in “Compared to What” and a nod to the challenges faced by the LGBTQ community in her version of “Ballad of the Sad Young Men.” According to her website, Reverend Jesse Jackson once called Flack “socially relevant and politically fearless,” although as she aged, she lamented that many of the issues she faced as a musician still linger. “It makes me incredibly sad that a lot of the songs I recorded 50 years ago about civil rights, equality, poverty, hunger, and suffering in our society are still relevant in 2020,” she told AARP in 2020, acknowledging her music’s connection to “growing economic disparities, to the Black Lives Matter movement, to police brutality, to activism fighting indifference, and the need for each of us to acknowledge and address this issue.” That legacy has endured through the decades, with Flack influencing younger artists like Lauryn Hill and the Fugees — who released their own popular version of “Killing Me Softly” in 1996 — along with Lizzo, Lady Gaga, and Ariana Grande. Whether it’s protest, romance, or classics, no matter what subject Flack approaches, “every song I record represents something deep and personal to me,” she told NPR music journalist Ann Powers in 2020. “Every song is my sole focus whether I’m in the studio or on stage.”
