Video hit The Fugees

The Fugees - Killing Me Softly With His Song

Killing Me Softly with His Song is a song composed by Charles Fox and written by Norman Gimbel, which was a number-one hit in 1973 for Roberta Flack.
The song has been remade by numerous artists, most notably the Fugees whose rendition contributed to their Grammy Award-winning album, The Score.

Hip hop group the Fugees covered the song in 1995 on their album The Score, with Lauryn Hill singing the lead vocals. Their version, titled "Killing Me Softly," became a hit, reaching number two on the U.S. airplay chart, and had similar success in the United Kingdom, reaching number one, becoming 1996's best selling single in the country, and has since sold 1.36 million copies there. The version sampled the 1990 song "Bonita Applebum" by A Tribe Called Quest from their debut album People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. ATCQ themselves had sampled the riff from the song "Memory Band" found on the self-titled album of 1960s psychedelic soul Chicago band called Rotary Connection. The Fugees single was so successful that the track was 'deleted' and thus no longer supplied to retailers whilst the track was still in the Top 20 so that attention could be drawn to the next single, "Ready or Not." Propelled by the success of the Fugees track, the 1972 recording by Roberta Flack was remixed in 1996 with the vocalist adding some new vocal flourishes: this version topped the Hot Dance Club Play chart. In 2008, "Killing Me Softly With His Song" was ranked number 25 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop and #44 on its list of the "100 Greatest Songs of the '90s."

Disputed origins

Norman Gimbel came to California in the mid-1960s. He was introduced to the Argentinean-born composer Lalo Schifrin (then of Mission: Impossible fame) and began writing songs to a number of Schifrin's films. Both Gimbel and Schifrin made a suggestion to write a Broadway musical together, who Schifrin gave Gimbel an Argentinean novel to read as a possible idea. The book was never made into a musical, but in one of the chapters, the principal character describes himself as sitting alone in a bar drinking and listening to an American pianist 'killing me softly with his blues.' Gimbel put the idea in his 'idea' book for use at a future time with a parenthesis around the word 'blues' and substituted the word 'song' instead.

According to Lori Lieberman, the artist who performed the original recording in 1972, the song was born of a poem she wrote after experiencing a strong reaction to the song "Empty Chairs," written, composed, and recorded by Don McLean. She then related this information to Gimbel, who took her feelings and put them into words. Then, Gimbel passed the words on to Fox, who set them to music.

Fox himself, however, has specifically repudiated Lieberman's having input into the song's creation, saying: "We [ie. Gimbel and Fox] wrote the song and [Lieberman] heard it and said it reminded her of how she felt at [a Don McLean] concert. Don McLean didn't inspire Norman [Gimbel] or I to write the song but even Don McLean thinks he's the inspiration for the song according to his official website!"

The 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'd 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

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

But he was there, this stranger, singing clear and loud

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