The 82-year-old singer talks about her storied career ahead of this year’s
Grammys, where she’ll accept the lifetime achievement award
On a Roberta Flack record, everything moves slowly. The beats tarry, encouraging the instruments to treat them with grace and the singer to savor every note. When Flack sings a song, she caresses each cadence, considering and intensifying them, the better to realize the full meaning of the lyric. It’s a one-of-a-kind style, often misconstrued as minimalist or middle-of-the-road. In fact, it contains many complex and roiling parts, and, often, it escalates to a vocal crescendo so thunderous it could shake a concert hall to its core.
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