Roberta Flack, a Grammy Award-winning vocalist, has died. She was 88.
According to a press announcement, the Grammy-winning artist died on Monday, February 24. Flack was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) two and a half years ago, but the cause of death was unknown.
“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” a press release stated. “She died calmly, surrounded by her family. Roberta defied expectations and set new marks. “She was also a proud educator.”
Flack was one of the biggest music artists of the 1970s, with three No. 1 songs in two years: “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love.”
In November 2022, a spokeswoman for the iconic singer-songwriter informed PEOPLE that Flack was diagnosed with ALS in August and was hospitalized for treatment. According to a press statement released at the time, the sickness “has made it impossible to sing and not easy to speak.”
“It will take a lot more than ALS to silence this icon,” the statement stated. “Miss Flack intends to continue pursuing her musical and creative interests. Her perseverance and enthusiastic acceptance of music, which propelled her from humble beginnings to the international limelight, remain vital and inspiring.”
Earlier that year, the performer revealed her ambitious goals for the future, despite recent health setbacks such as a 2016 stroke and a very moderate case of breakthrough COVID-19 in January 2022.
“The pandemic has kept most of us offstage for two years,” Flack told PEOPLE. “I don’t know what the next two years will hold, but I hope to see my fans in person sometime soon.”
On April 21, 2018, Flack was rushed to the hospital after getting unwell at a fundraiser concert at New York’s iconic Apollo Theater, where she was scheduled to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Foundation of America.
“She suffered a stroke a few years ago,” her manager told PEOPLE. “She was not feeling well; therefore, it was better to take her to the hospital. Although she is doing well, the hospital is holding her overnight for surveillance.
Flack was born in 1937 in North Carolina and received her first piano from her father, who had saved it from a junkyard.
“He painted it green, and it smelled bad, but I played and practiced for untold hours on that piano,” she told PEOPLE in 2021. “It gave me musical wings, something I desperately needed as a nine-year-old girl. Despite facing several setbacks, I persevered. “Keep trying.”
Flack graduated from Howard University aged 19 and worked as a teacher before beginning her singing career in the 1960s.
Her debut album, First Take, was published in 1969, but her career did not take off until 1972, when Clint Eastwood included “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” from the album in his film Play Misty for Me.
“Through the years, I’ve sung that song thousands of times, and it has taken on different stories in my life, [but] honestly, at the time it was recorded, I sang it about my cat who had just died,” Flack told PEOPLE when asked about her breakout single. “I adored that kitty so much. That’s the tale I told during the recording.
Though Flack was not the first to sing and record “Killing Me Softly with His Song” (Lori Lieberman did so in 1971), she released her version in January 1973, and it remained at number one for five weeks.
Flack’s smash No. 1 songs “Killing Me Softly with His Song” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love” helped her maintain her popularity throughout the 1970s.
She was the first and only solo artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in two consecutive years.
After a two-year sabbatical to deal with tonsillitis, Flack returned to music in 1977 with the album Blue Lights in the Basement. Her track “The Closer I Get to You,” a duet with Donny Hathaway, was a smash. In the 1980s and 1990s, she also had duet singles with Peabo Bryson (“Tonight I Celebrate My Love”) and Maxi Priest (“Set the Night to Music”).
Flack’s most recent album, Let It Be Roberta, featured covers of Beatles tunes and was released in 2012. Her last live engagement was a duet with Valerie Simpson in 2017 at Lincoln Center in New York City.
In 2018, she released the song “Running” from the soundtrack for the documentary 3100: Run and Become. In a statement to Billboard, she stated, “The music remains my lifeline.” And the words to ‘Running’ reflect where I am now: striving to stay going via music.”
A documentary on the singer, Roberta, aired at New York’s DOC NYC film festival in 2022, ahead of its early 2023 broadcast debut on PBS as part of the “American Masters” series. Flack also released The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music, a children’s book about her childhood (and the piano her father gifted her).
Flack’s 2022 was full of festivities. Her soundtrack record for the 1982 Richard Pryor picture Bustin’ Loose, which had been out of circulation for decades, was digitally re-released to commemorate its 40th anniversary.
Flack co-produced the album, which was unusual for a Black woman at the time. Aside from its musical worth, Flack told PEOPLE at the time that she was proud of the album’s pioneering status as a significant achievement for a Black woman in what was then mostly a white man’s business.
“It was, and to some degree, still is a rare thing for a Black female artist to be asked to produce anything for a major film or a major label,” she told me. “The glass ceiling that existed then, and let’s face it, still exists now, is gradually being pushed through, but it is a very real challenge for women of any color—especially for women of color.”
Flack got an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in May 2023. In a speech delivered on her behalf by her former pupil and background singer Gabrielle Goodman, Flack wrote, “I wish I could meet each of you, but know that I love you and am so proud of you.” “Your future is as bright as you are.”
In 2024, engineer and producer Ebonie Smith created an album of poetry and song, On Imagination, which included “She Came Home Blameless,” a poem by Maya Angelou read by Flack’s longtime friend Valerie Simpson, as well as a spiritual sung by the R&B legend from her last recording, “Down by the River.”