• From: belfast
  • Registered: 2007-05-11
  • Posts: 22

Topic: lil quiz

roberta fleck sang a song called killing me softly can any one tell me the story behind it????

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2 Reply by badeye (edited by badeye 2007-06-23 12:52:47)

  • badeye
  • The Blues Fixer
  • Offline
  • From: Cape Breton Island, Canada
  • Registered: 2006-09-02
  • Posts: 3,381

Re: lil quiz

Hello Musicman I read somewhere that Roberta Flack wrote that song about Don MacLean. Google search her name and you'll find it.  Hope this helps you.

Take Care...Badeye.

one caper after another
  • From: BELGIUM
  • Registered: 2007-01-27
  • Posts: 3,403

Re: lil quiz

If you read the lyrics, the first thing you notice is that the man she loves is "killing her softly, with a song, read in public some letters she wrote, and some more events". She is/was in love with a young guy, who sings beautiful songs.
This is my answer on the question.
Good Luck

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  • From: BELGIUM
  • Registered: 2007-01-27
  • Posts: 3,403

Re: lil quiz

If you read the lyrics, the first thing you notice is that the man she loves is "killing her softly, with a song, read in public some letters she wrote, and some more events". She is/was in love with a young guy, who sings beautiful songs.
This is my answer on the question.
Good Luck
In fact, I think the song is originally
A poem about McLean, Killing Me Softly With His Blues by Lori Lieberman, was reworked into a song called "killing me softly with this song" by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel.
Lieberman was the first to record it (in 1972), but the song has two more well-known covers.
The first major hit version was by Roberta Flack in 1973;
The Fugees's version was a major hit in 1996.
Do I win a price now?

[color=blue]- GITAARDOCPHIL SAIS: TO CONQUER DEAD, YOU HAVE TO DIE[/color]   AND [color=blue] we are born to die[/color]
- MY GUITAR PLAYS EVERY STYLE = BLUES, ROCK, METAL, so I NEED TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY IT.
[color=blue]Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.[/color]

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5 Reply by arkady (edited by arkady 2007-06-24 09:26:12)

  • arkady
  • arkady
  • ambient moderator
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  • From: England
  • Registered: 2006-11-23
  • Posts: 2,147

Re: lil quiz

Hi
According to Wikipedia,

"Killing Me Softly with His Song" is a 1971 song composed by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, which has become a pop standard. The song was inspired by a poem by Lori Lieberman, "Killing Me Softly with His Blues", which she wrote after seeing a then-unknown Don McLean perform the song Empty Chairs live.

Just my bit.

Ark

  • From: Berlin
  • Registered: 2007-05-25
  • Posts: 50

Re: lil quiz

If by "story behind it" you mean, how the song came about, then I think -arkady- has answered that.  Boy Wikipedia is great, isn't it.  If you mean just "what the song is about" then, I think:  she's just gotten over some love affair that went south, and she happens to go to hear this singer she heard about ("and so I came to see him, to listen for a while") and there he was and, as cruel fate would have it, he's singing sad love songs that expressed everything she was feeling.

"I felt he'd found my letters....".  This doesn't imply that he found HER letters; just felt that way because it was so close...

They didn't know each other, that is clear. "he sang as if he knew me....looked right thru me as if I wasn't there". 
Sad, because although he is unaware of her, he is breaking her heart. She's just in the audience, and he's expressing her pain and sadness as if he knew all about her.   

I've performed this song countless times, and I've always worked with this interpretation.