OG Artist Goes Uncredited: Killing Me Softly

Angelically, Lauryn Hill opens this gut-wrencher with quite lonely vocals – a refreshing yet gloomy follow-up to “The Beast.” This back-and-forth presents as a theme throughout the album, exhibiting the musical range of not only Hill but the trio as a whole.

In 1996 the group proved their ability to hold their own in the game, showcasing their proficiency in rap, skit, and lyric writing, but more than anything, debuted the young Lauryn Hill’s unearthly vocals and her mind-boggling rap abilities. In the late 90s, a new movement was brewing. Artists began sampling more jazz and blues incorporating this rap-singer-songwriter fusion – something unseen before.

Exactly in the middle of rap trio Fugees’ debut album “The Score,” sits “Killing Me Softly.” Possibly one of the most recognizable songs throughout several decades, as the musicality in the song itself is dreamlike, timeless, and deeply effective. Though it’s known that the group covered the song, unfortunately, it’s not widely known among the public who the original writer is.

In February of 1996, the Fugees released the song on their album, thinking it wouldn’t be much of a hit. They added their own twist that transformed the cover by Roberta Flack, all while keeping that original sweet yet somber theme and sound of unrequited love. They infused the eternal musicality with a Hip-hop twist by sampling A Tribe Called Quest’s “Bonita Applebum.” In sampling the 1990 anthem, they were also taking bits and pieces from “Daylight” by RAMP, “Memory Band” by Rotary Connection, “Jagger the Dagger” by Eugene McDaniels, and “Fool Yourself” by Little Feat. The trio stripped the sample down to solely the sitar and the drums. Specifically, the sitar is taken from “Memory Ban” by Rotary Connection, released in 1967. And the drums from “Fool Yourself” By Little Feet (1973). These both were paired with simple yet complex, emotionally intelligent keyboards and sit perfectly together under Hill’s vocals.

Insanely sparse, with drums and the sitar from a Tribe, keyboards, and bass on the bridge but the base is just Hill. The chords came from layers of Lauryn’s voice to really pull at emotions.

In the cover, released in 1973, Roberta Flack’s voice is so incredible but much more mellow and paired with a subtle groove pulled together by every jazz legend imaginable. She found the song in the strangest way.

She quotes in the Washington Post (2020), “I probably heard it four times on the flight. The lyrics were haunting and the chord changes were lush. I could feel the song and knew I could tell the song’s story my way. Parts of the song reminded me of my life, of the pain that comes with loving someone deeply, of feeling moved by music, which is the universal language. More than anything makes us feel.”

She heard the song for the first time on a plane as part of the in-flight music. So who really wrote it? A young Don Mclean was playing “Empty Chairs” one night at a venue and somewhere in the crowd was an even younger Lori Lieberman. She had been so deeply touched by the voice of Mclean. The song he was singing was a tale of his broken heart after being left by his lover. “And I wonder if you know/ that I never understood/ that although you said you’d go/ until you did I never thought you would.”

A gentle song performed by a very talented Mclean with soft beautiful vocals and strong, sweet, yet depressing lyrics. A poem of triumph love, and heartbreak, similar to what Lori would go on to write. Touched by the music she quickly scribbled down on a napkin a few lines of poetry in what I imagine to be an ill-lit room. Specifically, a line she had jotted down was “Strumming my pain with his finger.” As she felt he depicted her pain perfectly throughout the song. She brought the napkin back to her writing partner Norman Gimble somewhat unwillingly. Later it would be revealed that the relationship between the two was one of an affair and very invasive, giving Lori the idea that she wasn’t allowed to have thoughts and poems of her own.

The 1970s was full of singer-songwriters like Janis Ian, Joni Mitchell, Nico, and so many more. Norman Gimbal and Charles Fox wanted to mirror this commercial success and set off to find the next young singer-songwriter to profit from. Lori had only been 19 when they started working together and began an affair with Norman who was quick to invade her private thoughts and began telling her what to say and sing. The three collaborated and released the song “Killing Me Softly,” It didn’t gain much success but Lori felt strongly about the song and continued to play it at gigs and share the story behind it. Soon after Lori and Gimbal’s relationship fell apart, this led to the demise of the songwriting trio and practically the end of her career. Gimbal and Fox involved many lawyers and pushed for any further money she would make off of singing and performing. The song resulted in only being played really on airlines.

“Very, very controlling,” Lori recalled the two being, “I felt like I was pushed on stage and I was singing other people’s material, although that material was based on my private diaries. I felt victimized for most of my early career.”

When the Fugees covered the song they went off the chords Roberta Flack had changed. They however did add more of a twist that went further than just that rap infusion. The reason why the musicality of the song works so well, the original, Flack’s, and the Fugees’, is because of the series of chords. The same set of notes used in the song have different tones and lead to a happy or sad tone. This is based on the major and relative minor, done very intentionally. It switches constantly between their major and minor and has something called a deceptive cadence, just like the singer is both in love but also heartbroken.

“Killing Me Softly,” received three Grammy’s in 1973 through Roberta Flack’s version, and the Fugees received one in 1997. Even after twenty-four years, the song remains timeless yet to most of the audience Lori remains unknown.