Flack's commercial success reached its peak with her chart-topping singles, 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' and 'Killing Me Softly with His Song', with them both making the Billboard Top 100 in the early 1970s. However, this songbird from North Carolina had an incredible career, defined by much more than her mainstream hit records.
After forming a hit-making partnership with Donny Hathaway and Peabo Lane, Flack had found her niche. She was determined to remain nuanced, reserved and shrouded in a midst of warmth and gentility. Even when the R&B scene began to take off towards the end of the 1970s and into the early 80s, Flack stayed true to her musical roots, determined to stick with the formula that had led her to achieving a string of smash hits.
Flack decided to play the long game, and in return achieved four Grammy awards and became a regular on American adult's Contemporary Radio Stations. In 1974, she topped the charts again with 'Feel Like Makin' Love' before taking a break from performing live and instead focusing on her charity work and studio recording sessions.
This was not to be the end of her career, in fact it was far from it. She went on to achieve her biggest UK hit alongside Peabo Lane with the love ballad 'Tonight, I Celebrate my Love', with it reaching No. 2 in the charts in 1983. Flack went on to tour with Miles Davis, dueted with Michael Jackson and covered the likes of Leonard Cohen.
Flack decided to play the long game, and in return achieved four Grammy awards and became a regular on American adult's Contemporary Radio Stations.
However, all this success did not come without its challenges. Flack was forever weighed down by the constant comparisons to other black female artists. According to The Guardian, she once said after being "unfavourably" compared to Aretha Franklin that: "I am a black person who sings the way I do. I am not a black person who sounds anything like Aretha Franklin or like Chaka Khan. I shouldn't have to change in order to be who I am".
Flack also overcame many personal battles during the course of her career. She was married twice. Firstly, to American Jazz Bassist, Steve Novosel. They married in 1966 but divorced a few years later in 1972. She then married for a second time to Stewart Bosley, but this too ended in divorce.
In the late 1990s and early noughties, after achieving yet another Grammy nomination in 1994, Flack began to take a dignified route into an unofficial semi-retirement by fading gradually from mainstream music and media platforms. She released a string of Christmas and cover albums, including a pleasant and rather smart Beatles Collection, titled Let It Be Roberta in 2012. However, despite having the backing of Yoko Ono it failed to leave a mark commercially.
In 2016, Flack's health began to deteriorate after suffering from a stroke. In 2022 she was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), known in the UK as Motor Neurone Disease, leaving her unable to sing.
Flack was a trailblazer. Not only did she help birth the "Quiet Storm" branch of R&B that has produced contemporary soul superstars such as The Fugees but she remained focused on who she wanted to be as an artist, she never wavered and was rewarded with a string of smash hits and countless accolades.
All that is left for me to say is, Ms. Flack, you will continue to kill us all softly with your song, whenever we hear your voice.
Roberta Cleopatra Flack, singer, born 10 February 1937; died 24 February 2025, aged 88.