Lori Lieberman (born November 15, 1951) is an American singer-songwriter who accompanies herself on guitar and piano.
[ She co-wrote and recorded the first version of "]Killing Me Softly with His Song
"Killing Me Softly with His Song" is a song composed by Charles Fox with lyrics by Norman Gimbel. The lyrics were written in collaboration with Lori Lieberman after she was inspired by a Don McLean performance in late 1971. Denied writing cre ...
", which became a hit single for Roberta Flack
Roberta Cleopatra Flack (February 10, 1937 – February 24, 2025) was an American singer and pianist known for her emotive, genre-blending ballads that spanned R&B, jazz, Folk music, folk, and pop and contributed to the birth of the quiet storm ...
in 1973, and again in 1996 with a new arrangement by the Fugees. Lieberman's writing partners and management team of Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel
Norman Gimbel (November 16, 1927 – December 19, 2018) was an American lyricist and songwriter of popular songs and themes to television shows and films. He wrote the lyrics for songs including " Ready to Take a Chance Again" (with composer Cha ...
did not assign her credit for helping to write the song, so she did not receive millions of dollars worth of royalties.
Lieberman released four studio albums through Capitol Records
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007), and simply known as Capitol, is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-base ...
in the 1970s, in the style of soft rock
Soft rock (also known as light rock or mellow rock) is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in the United States and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, mel ...
and folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk horror
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Fo ...
. After a retreat in 1978, she resumed her recording career in 1995.[
]
Biography
Early life
Lieberman was born in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
in 1951 to a Jewish family. Her father, Kenneth Lieberman, was a chemical engineer who invented popcorn ceiling treatment.[ The middle of three sisters,] she spent her childhood and adolescence traveling between California and Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
where she attended the International School of Geneva. She returned to the US and attended Pine Manor College
Messina College is an undergraduate constituent college of Boston College. Until 2020 the school was an independent private college in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts referred to as "Pine Manor College" (PMC).
The school was founded in 1911 as a p ...
in Massachusetts.[
Lieberman began singing and composing at a young age, simultaneously acquiring a taste for French singers such as ]Sylvie Vartan
Sylvie Vartan (; born Sylvie Georges Vartanian on 15 August 1944) is a Bulgarians in France, Bulgarian-French singer and actress. She is known as one of the most productive and tough-sounding yé-yé artists. Her performances often featured ela ...
as well as American rock and pop music. The latter passion was fed by an older sister who listened to albums by Joni Mitchell
Roberta Joan Mitchell (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian and American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and painter. As one of the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitch ...
, Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning nearly seven decades. An Academy Awards, Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Awards, Grammy Award-winning rec ...
, Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian songwriter, singer, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, soc ...
and Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American Rock music, rock band formed in San Francisco, California, in 1965. One of the pioneering bands of psychedelic rock, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the San Francisco Bay Area, ...
.
First recording career
Shortly after she returned to America to study in her late teens, Lieberman was signed to a five-year production, recording, and publishing deal struck between Capitol Records
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007), and simply known as Capitol, is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-base ...
and songwriters Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel
Norman Gimbel (November 16, 1927 – December 19, 2018) was an American lyricist and songwriter of popular songs and themes to television shows and films. He wrote the lyrics for songs including " Ready to Take a Chance Again" (with composer Cha ...
. Lieberman's contributions to the process were occasionally credited during this period of her career, most notably on "My Lover Do You Know", which appeared on her first album, ''Lori Lieberman'' (1972), and which was singled out for praise by ''Billboard'' magazine. Lieberman recalled later that her management team was "very, very controlling... I felt victimized for most of my early career."[
In the gap between her first and second albums, a song from Lieberman's debut, "]Killing Me Softly with His Song
"Killing Me Softly with His Song" is a song composed by Charles Fox with lyrics by Norman Gimbel. The lyrics were written in collaboration with Lori Lieberman after she was inspired by a Don McLean performance in late 1971. Denied writing cre ...
", was recorded by Roberta Flack
Roberta Cleopatra Flack (February 10, 1937 – February 24, 2025) was an American singer and pianist known for her emotive, genre-blending ballads that spanned R&B, jazz, Folk music, folk, and pop and contributed to the birth of the quiet storm ...
, becoming a US No. 1 and international hit and rapidly overshadowing Lieberman's own, more understated original. In March 1973, Lieberman recorded two songs for the film '' The Harrad Experiment'', introduced in May that year. The songs, "I Hope I'll Have Your Love" and "Go Gently", were written by Fox and Gimbel. Her second album, ''Becoming'' (August 1973), became her first to reach the Billboard Top 200.
Two more Lieberman albums, ''A Piece of Time'' (1974) and ''Straw Colored Girl'' (1975), appeared on Capitol Records
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007), and simply known as Capitol, is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-base ...
. In the wake of her departure from Capitol, material from her first four albums was compiled on a European release, ''The Best of Lori Lieberman''. In 1977, the song "Great American Melting Pot", written by Lynn Ahrens for the television show '' Schoolhouse Rock'', had vocals provided by Lieberman. She sang a song in the 1980s television show '' Fame''.[.]
In 1976, Lieberman freed herself from the onerous management of Gimbel and Fox, and left Capitol Records. She returned with ''Letting Go'' ( Millennium Records, 1978, distributed by Casablanca Records
Casablanca Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Republic Records. Under its founder Neil Bogart, Casablanca was most successful during the disco era of the mid to late 1970s. The label focuses ...
/RCA Records
RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic R ...
), recorded in New York with producer Paul Leka. Lieberman's compositions were fully credited on the album. The song "Jingle" spoke to Lieberman's growing dissatisfaction with the music industry. Soon after the release of ''Letting Go'', Lieberman abandoned her career.[
]
Hiatus and second career
By the early 1990s, Lieberman was a mother of three who had settled in California and built a life out of the spotlight. When a neighbor, Joseph Cali (who had played Joey in ''Saturday Night Fever
''Saturday Night Fever'' is a 1977 American Dance in film, dance Drama (film and television), drama film directed by John Badham and produced by Robert Stigwood. It stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young Italian Americans, Italian-America ...
'' 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. The album and its follow-up, 1996's ''Home of Whispers'', were recorded live and marketed towards the audiophile community. A third release, ''Gone Is The Girl'', a studio album with overdubs, came out in 1998 prior to the demise of the Pope label. This collection combined new Lieberman songs with some revisited material from her past. In 2003, Lieberman released another album of original material, ''Monterey'', which came out via her own company, Drive On Records.
From 2009 onwards, Lieberman enjoyed increased visibility. Following the release of ''Gun Metal Sky'' (Drive On Records) in 2009, she became a major label recording artist for the first time since the 1970s when V2 Records
V2 Records (or V2 Music and V2 Benelux; V2 being an abbreviation for Virgin 2) is a record label that was purchased by Universal Music Group in 2007, sold to PIAS in 2013 and partially acquired by Universal in 2022 (as part of larger PIAS 49% ...
(originally a subsidiary of Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a British record label owned by Universal Music Group. They were originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), ...
and now part of the Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as Universal Music Group or Universal Music) is a Netherlands, Dutch–United States, American multinational Music industry, music corporation under Law of the Netherlands, ...
) took up the option of remastering, repackaging and distributing ''Gun Metal Sky'' in territories outside America. For its European incarnation, the revised album appeared in 2010 under the new title ''Takes Courage''.[ 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. "Rise" was included on Lieberman's 2013 album, ''Bricks Against The Glass'' (Drive On/Rough Trade Benelux).
]
"Killing Me Softly" controversy
Since the mid-1990s as Lieberman's profile has grown, Gimbel and Fox have publicly denied the original working method they were reported to have established with Lieberman at the outset of her career, namely that Lieberman's own writing was the essential material from which their songs grew. This dispute has specifically focused on "Killing Me Softly with His Song
"Killing Me Softly with His Song" is a song composed by Charles Fox with lyrics by Norman Gimbel. The lyrics were written in collaboration with Lori Lieberman after she was inspired by a Don McLean performance in late 1971. Denied writing cre ...
", which had hitherto been said to have sprung from a poem written by Lieberman following her attendance at a Don McLean
Donald McLean III (born October 2, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Known as the "American Troubadour" or "King of the Trail", he is best known for his 1971 hit "American Pie (song), American Pie", an eight-and-a-half-minut ...
concert.
Both Gimbel and Fox asserted in print that Lieberman had no involvement in the creation of the song. Don McLean supported Lieberman both on his website and from the stage of a concert he invited her to attend in 2010. However, the matter reached an unequivocal conclusion only when contemporaneous articles from the early 1970s were exhumed, all of them vindicating Lieberman. On April 5, 1973, Gimbel had informed the ''Daily News'', "She ori Liebermantold us about this strong experience she had listening to McLean... I had a notion this might make a good song so the three of us discussed it. We talked it over several times, just as we did for the rest of the numbers we wrote for this album and we all felt it had possibilities.".[O'Haire, Patrici]
“A Killer of a Song
," ''Daily News'' Lieberman, Gimbel and Fox were described in a ''Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
'' magazine article in 1973 as a songwriting team.[
]
Personal life
Lieberman's songwriting colleague Norman Gimbel
Norman Gimbel (November 16, 1927 – December 19, 2018) was an American lyricist and songwriter of popular songs and themes to television shows and films. He wrote the lyrics for songs including " Ready to Take a Chance Again" (with composer Cha ...
carried on an extramarital affair
An affair is a relationship typically between two people, one or both of whom are either married or in a long-term monogamous or emotionally-exclusive relationship with someone else. The affair can be solely sexual, solely physical or solely em ...
with Lieberman after she began working with Gimbel and Fox as artist managers. Gimbel was married and 44 years old, and she was 20. The two kept the affair secret for years.
In 1979, Lieberman married film director Neal Israel
Neal Israel (born July 27, 1945) is an American film and television director, screenwriter, and producer best known for his comedic work in the 1980s for films such as ''Police Academy'', ''Real Genius'', and ''Bachelor Party''. Israel has also ...
. They divorced a year later.[
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
Malibu ( ; ; ) is a beach city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, about west of downtown Los Angeles. It is known for its Mediterranean climate, its strip of beaches stretching along the Pacific Ocean coa ...
, along with horses and dogs.
In 1995, her neighbor, actor Joseph Cali, best-known for playing "Joey" in ''Saturday Night Fever
''Saturday Night Fever'' is a 1977 American Dance in film, dance Drama (film and television), drama film directed by John Badham and produced by Robert Stigwood. It stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young Italian Americans, Italian-America ...
'', encouraged her to begin recording her songs again. After her second divorce, Lieberman married Cali.
Discography
* ''Lori Lieberman'' ( Capitol, 1972)
* ''Becoming'' (Capitol, 1973) US No. 192Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...
* ''A Piece of Time'' (Capitol, 1974)
* ''Straw Colored Girl'' (Capitol, Bovema, EMI
EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...
, 1975)
* ''The Best of Lori Lieberman'' (Capitol, Bovema, EMI, 1976)
* ''Letting Go'' (Millennium
A millennium () is a period of one thousand years, one hundred decades, or ten centuries, sometimes called a kiloannum (ka), or kiloyear (ky). Normally, the word is used specifically for periods of a thousand years that begin at the starting ...
, Casablanca
Casablanca (, ) is the largest city in Morocco and the country's economic and business centre. Located on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Chaouia (Morocco), Chaouia plain in the central-western part of Morocco, the city has a populatio ...
, RCA
RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...
, 1978)
* ''Baby Songs: Christmas''(Bill Elliott Music, ASCAP, 1991)
* ''A Thousand Dreams'' (Pope Music, 1995)
* ''Home of Whispers'' (Pope Music, 1996)
* ''Gone is the Girl'' (Pope Music, 1998)
* ''Monterey'' (Drive On Records, 2003)
* ''Gun Metal Sky'' (Drive On, 2009)
* ''Takes Courage'' ( V2, 2010)
* ''Bend Like Steel'' (Drive On/V2, 2011)
* ''Bricks Against the Glass'' (Drive On/Rough Trade Benelux, 2013)
* ''Ready for the Storm'' (Butler Records, 2015)
* ''The Girl and the Cat'' (Butler, 2019)
* ''Truly'' (Drive On, 2022)
References
External links
Official website
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lieberman, Lori
1951 births
Living people
Jewish American composers
American expatriates in Switzerland
American women singer-songwriters
American folk singers
Singer-songwriters from California
Jewish American rock musicians
Jewish folk singers
Guitarists from California
20th-century American guitarists
Capitol Records artists
20th-century American women guitarists
21st-century American Jews
21st-century American women