A lot of people will be familiar with The Fugees’ 1996 take on this. In fairness, Lauryn Hill does a great job with it.
This version isn’t even the original. That honour goes to Lori Lieberman, who recorded the song in 1971. The writers are Charles Fox & Norman Gimbel.
But there’s something undeniably lovely about this. The electric piano glides gently over the warm and serene bassline. A guitar whispers in the background, flickering around the piano like a candle on a beach.
And her voice – incredible. The choruses have soulful backing vocals which create a truly heavenly effect. It’s much more strident than the original, but not as hard as the hip hop version. Almost a perfect balance!
Roberta Flack’s cover of the song was released in 1973, and went to number 1 for 5 weeks, far outselling the earlier version.