Roberta Flack, known for her popular hits “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” has passed away at 88.
“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” a statement from Flack’s representative reads. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”
Over recent years, Flack had been bravely battling with ALS. A cause of death has not been announced.
With a career defined by groundbreaking artistry, Flack, the classically trained daughter of a church organist, dazzled the music world with 14 Grammy nominations and five wins. Her accolades include a coveted lifetime achievement award in 2020 and back-to-back Record of the Year honors.
From a tender age, called out to her. At just 15, Flack was granted a scholarship to Howard University with dreams of becoming a concert pianist, even though the classical world was predominantly white. Inspired by the gospel works of Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke, Flack would develop her craft by performing at small, intimate clubs and teaching in North Carolina and Washington, D.C.
“I didn’t try to be a soul singer, a jazz singer, a blues singer – no category,” Flack wrote in an email announcing the 50th-anniversary reconsideration of her debut album, First Take. “My music is my expression of what I feel and believe in a moment.”
The release of First Take (1969) began a transformative journey. However, a 1970 guest appearance on The Third Bill Cosby Special flipped the script of her destiny when Clint Eastwood wove her soulful performance of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” into the scoring of his 1971 psychological thriller, Play Misty For Me (1971). Flack expressed her reluctance for her song to be added to the movie score.
“I thought it was too slow,” she said via Far Out. “He was sure it wasn’t. He was right – and I was pleasantly surprised.”
The song would become No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972. Flack’s career quickly skyrocketed, and Flack achieved much success, with hit albums such as Chapter Two, Quiet Fire, Killing Me Softly, Feel Like Makin’ Love, and earnest duets with Donny Hathaway. Albums like Blue Lights in the Basement (1977) and collaborations with icons such as Hathaway and Peabo Bryson helped seal her legacy as one of the most influential artists ever.
“I loved Donny. He was a musical genius, and I don’t use that word lightly. Donny had his struggles through the years — he suffered from severe depression — but when he sat at the piano and sang for and with me, it was as if nothing was wrong. It was magnificent,” Flack said of her admiration for Hathaway.
Flack and Peabo’s 1983 single, “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,” also earned another Billboard smash.
Throughout her career, Flack was revered for her refusal to be pigeonholed and maintained her artistic inquisitiveness and willingness to push boundaries.
“I’ve been told I sound like Nina Simone, Nancy Wilson, Odetta, Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, even Mahalia Jackson. If everybody said sounded like one person, I’d worry,” she told New York Times reporter Jack Rosenthal. “But when they say I sound like them all, I know I’ve got my own style.”
In 2022, Flack shared the bittersweet news of her ALS diagnosis, announcing that the disease made it “impossible to sing and not easy to speak.”
ALS did not slow Flack down.
Just a year later, she gifted the world The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music—an autobiographical picture book co-authored with Coretta Scott King Award-winning novelist Tonya Bolden, recounting the magic of a restored piano, found abandoned in a junkyard by her father, and how the beloved instrument helped to shape her dreams of making it big in the music industry.
Rest in power, Roberta Flack.
“My hope is that out of all the anger and seeming hostility that we hear in some of today’s music will come some sort of coalition that will become politically involved.” — Roberta Flack
