Roberta Flack’s voice is such that it owns any composition she blesses it with. Soothing, heartfelt and undeniably beautiful, her career hits are all songs that have been career smashes for numerous talented vocalists, but her versions become the ones synonymous with mastery of the emotion and deep expression of the lyrics and their meaning. From “Killing Me Softly” to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” “Where Is the Love,” “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” and so many more, her ability to poignantly lilt and rest her voice on the most expressive words in lyrics is the stuff of legend, and what makes her one of the single most important voices in the history of music.
“First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” is the song that can convince even the most jaded soul of the absolute truth in the concept of love at first sight. And when Flack completely nails the opening stanza is this most poetic song, “The first time, ever I saw your face/I thought the sun rose in your eyes,” you’re emotionally finished. The song clearly has four more minutes, but, if you have even the slightest functioning conscience, you’re completely awestruck at this totality and utter beauty of this concept. She weaves a magic with these lyrics as if she’s a fairy Godmother holding a magic wand. There are no vocal histrionics here. There are no points here where Flack overwhelms the lyrics, or the pastoral backing track. This isn’t Mariah Carey’s overwrought multi octave stranglings and beatings of songs into pliant, yet wondrous submission. This is a woman who clearly is attempting and succeeding in believing every word she croons.
From her 1969 debut album First Take, in a manner consistent with the work of Minnie Riperton, and so many other elegant soul divas of the decade, it took time and patience to mine the ultimate beauty of her composition, as it wasn’t until its use in a stirring romantic interlude in Clint Eastwood’s 1971 “Play Misty for Me” that the song didn’t take off, along with Flack’s career, to the stratosphere. This makes all the sense in the world to this observer, as the lyrics evoke such passionate romantic and erotic visuals, that it would take the ultimate act of lust and sexuality to truly drive home the ultimate meaning contained within Flack’s exquisite work with the song.
Not to sound like a classicist, but they just don’t make songs like this anymore. It’s not a matter of the female artists not being around to do it, I’d posit that it’s more of a matter of the microwave nature of music in 2009 that causes a song with such beauty to not get the time, effort and deep attention to creating the ultimate that is at display here.
In any event, grab a glass of wine and that truly special, one of a kind someone, and lose yourself in the evocative wonder of this. When you are released from its swaddling trance of love, the world will absolutely appear to be a completely different place.
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