About The Song
The story goes that in November 1971, 20-year-old musician Lori Lieberman saw folk singer Don McLean in concert at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. McLean had released his second album, American Pie, only a few weeks earlier, and it had rocketed to the top of the charts (the single “American Pie” wouldn’t be released until the following January). However, Lieberman was so moved by another of his songs, “Empty Chairs”, that she scribbled notes there and then, on a napkin. She had an idea and took it to songwriting team Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, with whom she had signed a management contract a year or so earlier. She was also having an affair with Gimbel.
Lieberman and Gimbel fashioned a song that included a phrase Gimbel was toying with, “Killing me softly”, worthy of Raymond Chandler. Songwriting partner Fox wrote the music. Lieberman recorded the song and it was released in mid-1972. A lovely song, with a great — and surprisingly tricky — tune, an arresting lyric and a stunning title. It went nowhere. Lieberman’s treatment is of its time; it reeks of singer/songwriter; sensitive yes, and she puts her heart into it. But. Something was missing.
Roberta Flack was a classically trained pianist who happened to have a marvellous voice; pure and measured with perfect enunciation. Hearing Lieberman’s recording on a plane flight, she recognised a classic, and now it was she who took notes, trying to pin the song down. Through her friend Quincy Jones, she got in touch with Fox and procured the tune. She first performed the song unrehearsed at a concert in September 1972, to wild response, and was advised by her fellow performer Marvin Gaye not to sing it again until she’d recorded it.
Record it she did. Produced by Joel Dorn, responsible for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, an enormous hit for Flack in 1972 (though recorded in 1969), she provided the missing ingredient. In a masterly performance, that rich, clear voice poured over an echo-soaked backing, the stately rhythm marked by a subdued thunk. There’s also a near-imperceptible build-up, that so many other attempts miss, and a drift into otherworldly wordlessness toward the end as though words can’t suffice. Released in January 1973, it topped charts and won awards.
Don McLean was most surprised when he learnt there was a song about him. His “American Pie” was a rambling elegy to “the day the music died”: February 3 1959, to be precise, when McLean’s teenhood hero Buddy Holly perished in a plane crash. The song was an early contributor to, and influence on, the 1950s nostalgia boom that enveloped the western world in the 1970s: movies such as American Graffiti and That’ll Be the Day and the TV series Happy Days, which, interestingly enough, had its theme tune written by Fox and Gimbel. And by 1974, Flack’s producer Joel Dorn was working with McLean.
Video
Lyrics
… Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song
… I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him, to listen for a while
And there he was, this young boy
A stranger to my eyes
… Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song
… I felt all flushed with fever
Embarrassed by the crowd
I felt he found my letters and read each one out loud
I prayed that he would finish
But he just kept right on
… Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song
… He sang as if he knew me
In all my dark despair
And then he looked right through me as if I wasn’t there
And he just kept on singing
Singing clear and strong
… Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song
… Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me
… He was strumming my pain
Yeah, he was singing my life
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song