Killing Me Softly with His Song

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"Strumming my pain with his fingers... Singing my life with his words..." Killing Me Softly with His Song is a song about the pleasure and embarrassment of being seen. The feeling that someone has reached into your deepest, most private feelings, and laid them bare. It's a song about a singer, and about what music can do and a love song that feels at once happy and sad. The song was a huge hit in two different generations. It won Grammy Awards for The Fugees in 1997 and for Roberta Flack in 1974. Ray Padgett is author of Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time. He unfolds the layers of the song's history as a famous cover of a famous cover. Musicologist Nate Sloan…