Roberta Flack hit it big in 1973 with “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” Originally recorded by Lori Lieberman, and a song about the first time Lieberman saw Don McLean perform live, Flack (and Quincy Jones) transformed “Killing Me Softly” from a coffeehouse ballad to a bedroom jam. You’d be excused if you’ve never heard Lieberman’s original source material—or knew that Flack didn’t write it to begin with. Four years before that, Flack released her debut album First Take which opens with “Compared To What.” It’s politics and commentary set to a kind of a jazz that has a lot of the kind of soul that can cross over to a mainstream consciousness. Its music is urgent and trying to maintain stasis between calm and chaotic. It made perfect sense to play it during the montage in Boogie Nights that depicts the mounting cocaine problem that two of the main actors and their peripheral circles are helpless to curb. It’s a hell of a fucking introduction to the world by an artist.
The Great Songs 