Singer Roberta Flack, whose signature voice and soulful interpretations of songs such as “Killing Me Softly with His Song” catapulted her to the top of the charts and influenced generations, has died. She was 88.
The legendary singer died on Monday, according to a press release from her representatives provided to ABC News. No cause of death was shared in the statement.
“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning February 24, 2025,” the statement said. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator,” the statement continued.
Roberta Flack performs at Hammersmith Apollo in London, on July 18, 2006.
Brian Rasic/Getty Images
Flack was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as ALS, in 2022, which resulted in the loss of her singing voice, her publicists said at the time.
Flack topped the charts in the 1970s with hits including “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” “Where Is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You.”
The songstress was nominated for 14 Grammy awards, winning five — including a lifetime achievement award. She was the first artist to win the Grammy Award for record of the year in back-to-back years — for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in 1973 and “Killing Me Softly with His Song” in 1974. The latter would go on to top the charts again three decades later with a cover by the Fugees.
Roberta Flack sings on her TV special which aired on June 19, 1973.
ABC Photo Archive/ Disney Entertainment Content via Getty Images, FILE
Flack’s influence “looms over both R&B and indie ‘bedroom’ pop,” music critic Ann Powers wrote in a 2020 essay, calling Flack a “titan in the eyes of many fellow artists and discerning fans.”
“In more than a half-century of making music, she’s established herself as one of the most distinctive song stylists in the pop arena,” Powers wrote.
Flack was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, into a musical family; her mother was a church organist and her father a self-taught jazz pianist. A prodigy on the piano, she won a full music scholarship to Howard University, which she started attending at the age of 15. It was there that she would meet her close friend and collaborator, the late Donny Hathaway.
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