[1] She co-wrote and recorded the first version of "Killing Me Softly with His Song", which became a hit single for Roberta Flack in 1973, and again in 1996 with a new arrangement by the Fugees.
[2] Lieberman began singing and composing at a young age, simultaneously acquiring a taste for French singers such as Sylvie Vartan as well as American rock and pop music.
The latter passion was fed by an older sister who listened to albums by Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen and Jefferson Airplane.
In 1977, the song "Great American Melting Pot", written by Lynn Ahrens for the television show Schoolhouse Rock, had vocals provided by Lieberman.
[15][18] By the early 1990s, Lieberman was a mother of three who had settled in California and built a life out of the spotlight.,[5] When a neighbor, Joseph Cali (who had played Joey in Saturday Night Fever and was to become Lieberman's third husband) prompted her to return to music, she was initially reluctant but put aside these misgivings and recorded the album A Thousand Dreams which was largely made up of her own songs, appearing on the independent Pope Records label, and engineered by Mark Levinson.
[2] With funding and promotional support behind her, Lieberman started to tour Europe, drawing audiences sufficient in number to fill concert halls.
2011's swiftly released follow-up Bend Like Steel (Drive On/V2) consolidated her new-found success and led to her first forays into promotional videos.
In 2012, Lieberman's most overtly political single, "Rise", a response to the global economic crisis and the inequitable division of wealth, was released worldwide with an accompanying video.
[20] This dispute has specifically focused on "Killing Me Softly with His Song", which had hitherto been said to have sprung from a poem written by Lieberman following her attendance at a Don McLean concert.
On April 5, 1973, Gimbel had informed the Daily News, "She [Lori Lieberman] told us about this strong experience she had listening to McLean...
[10] In the 1980s, Lieberman bore three children to her second husband, film and television composer Gary Scott, raising them in the hills above Malibu, California, along with horses and dogs.
[10] In 1995, her neighbor, actor Joseph Cali, best-known for playing "Joey" in Saturday Night Fever, encouraged her to begin recording her songs again.