Roberta Flack | Softly with these Songs – Best Of [CD] CD

As an interpreter of other people’s material, Roberta Flack was peerless, capable of investing even sugary trifles like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love” with a rare warmth and sensuality. And when given something worthy of her talents–“Killing Me Softly With His Song”, for example–she positively shone; her reading of Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (the undoubted highlight here) ranks as one of pop’s most unforgettable moments, a genuinely transcendent masterpiece. But times change, and nowhere is the decline in Flack’s artistic fortunes more evident than in her choice of collaborator: from her work in the 1970s with the brilliant Donny Hathaway (who duets here on “Where Is The Love” and “Back Together Again”), through the 1980s, and the wretched Peabo Bryson (“Tonight, I Celebrate My Love”), right up to the obligatory “House Mix” of “Uh-Uh Ooh-Ooh Look Out (Here It Comes)”, a moronic slice of euro-disco. Yet despite the paucity of the material, that voice could still melt a glacier. –Andrew McGuire