In 1973, it became a number-one hit in the United States, Australia and Canada for Roberta Flack, and also reached number six on the UK Singles Chart.
[4] The versions by Fugees and Roberta Flack were both placed on the 2021 revised list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
[6] After decades of confirming Lieberman's contribution, Fox and Gimbel changed their story about the song's origins to downplay her role.
[1] The three shared a common Jewish heritage and Scorpio astrological signs, and they began to pool songwriting ideas.
After the concert, Lieberman phoned Gimbel to read him her napkin notes and share her experience of a singer reaching deep inside her world with his song.
[1] Lieberman's description reminded Gimbel of a song title that was already in his idea notebook: "killing us softly with some blues".
[10] The phrase had appeared five years earlier in the novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar; "...and Ronald was left alone at the piano, with all the time in the world to woodshed some of his bop ideas or to kill us softly with some blues."
Lieberman promoted the album by touring, and she always introduced the song "Killing Me Softly" by describing its origin in the McLean performance.
In 1973, in her first appearance on national television, Lieberman described this same origin story on The Mike Douglas Show after performing the song.
[1] When Lieberman toured through Canada in 1974 to promote her second album, Billboard magazine carried a public relations piece from Capitol Records about the three-way "song-producing team" of Lieberman/Gimbel/Fox, including a description of the Don McLean performance inspiring the song "Killing Me Softly".
Sean Derek, who worked for Gimbel and Fox as an assistant in the 1970s, confirmed that the two men would tell the McLean origin story "all the time".
Lieberman's lawyer, Frederic Ansis, recalled later that Gimbel and Fox could have been "nice guys" like other managers in the industry who released their unsuccessful artists without onerous payments, but they chose the other route.
[11]Gimbel's contribution supports Lieberman's stance: Lori is only 20 and she really is a very private person ... She told us about this strong experience she had listening to McLean ...
[11]Fox published a memoir in 2010, Killing Me Softly, My Life in Music, which contained nothing about the McLean performance inspiring the song, and downplayed Lieberman's role in the songwriting team.
In chapter two, the narrator describes himself as sitting in a bar listening to an American pianist friend "kill us softly with some blues".
In 2020, Lieberman said she was not seeking money or official songwriting credit, she just wanted the world to know the correct origin of the song.
[22] Roberta Flack first heard the song on an airplane, when the Lieberman original was featured on the in-flight audio program.
I immediately pulled out some scratch paper, made musical staves [then] play[ed] the song at least eight to ten times jotting down the melody that I heard.
Shortly afterwards Flack rehearsed the song with her band in the Tuff Gong Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, but did not release it.
American hip hop group Fugees released their version of the song (titled "Killing Me Softly") on their second album, The Score (1996), with Lauryn Hill singing the lead vocals.
The song has been certified triple-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales and streaming figures of approximately three million units in the US.
[54] "Killing Me Softly" was the last song Fugees recorded for The Score, after member Pras made the suggestion to cover it.
[55] Initially, Fugees wanted to change the lyrics of the song to make it anti-drugs and anti-poverty but the songwriters, Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, refused.
[56] Fugees' version features "percussive rhythms" with "a synth sitar sound, Wyclef's blurted chants, Hill's vocal melisma on the scatted bridge, and a bombastic drum-loop track".
"[58] Celebrating the album's 20th anniversary in February 2016, Kenneth Partridge from Billboard said, "It's a lovely cover that maintains the spirit of the original while taking the material in new directions.
[60] Peter Miro from Cash Box stated that the trio's reworking of the Roberta Flack standard "succeeds wildly."
[62] Simon Price from Melody Maker felt that Hill is "sweet like Candi Staton", "singing a gorgeous a cappella version".
"[64] James Hamilton from the Record Mirror Dance Update noted it as a "plaintive girl and muttering chaps' sparse bass bumped and sitar plinked but still tenderly crooned remake".
[65] Jordan Paramor from Smash Hits gave it five out of five and named it Best New Single, writing, "This is one hell of a track with the ability to blow your pants off and into space with the velocity of a rocket.
Smoother than David Wicks' chat-up lines, and a million times more endearing, this soulful hip hop number can have the entire Smash Hits office sighing and swaying their heads in euphoric pleasure within the first three beats.