Roberta Flack, the Grammy Award-winning singer best known for “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” has died. She was 88.
“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” Flack’s rep said in a statement to The Post.
“She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator,” the statement added.
The Post has reached out to Flack’s rep.
Flack was battling several health challenges in the years leading up to her death. She publicly revealed she had ALS in late 2022.
The progressive disease “has made it impossible to sing and not easy to speak,” Flack’s manager Suzanne Koga said in a release at the time. “But it will take a lot more than ALS to silence this icon.”
The 2022 release also said that the famous singer and pianist “plans to stay active in her musical and creative pursuits” through her eponymous foundation and other avenues.
Flack was born in North Carolina. As the daughter of a church organist, she learned how to play classic piano at a young age.
When she turned 15, she got a scholarship at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where her singing and piano talents were discovered. She was later signed to Atlantic Records Group
Flack was best known for hits like “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face,” the latter of which catapulted her into stardom after Clint Eastwood used it as the soundtrack for a love scene in his 1971 movie “Play Misty for Me.”
For both songs, Flack won back-to-back Grammy Awards for Record of the Year in 1973 and 1974. She was the first artist to accomplish that feat.
Flack’s other famous song is “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” which came out in 1974.
Over her career, Flack won five Grammys out of 14 nominations. She released 15 albums, her final album being the Beatles recital “Let It Be Roberta,” which came out in 2012.
“One of the hassles of being a Black female musician is that people are always backing you into a corner and telling 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 Bartok when I want to play.”
In 2020, Flack, who also advocated for causes like civil rights in her music, told NPR that “every single song I’ve recorded expressed something deep and personal to me.”
“Each was my singular focus whether in the studio or on the stage,” she added.