Lori Lieberman

Lori Lieberman
Birth name	Lori Lieberman
Born	November 15, 1951 (age 65) Los Angeles, California
Genres	Pop, soft rock, Folk rock
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	Piano Vocals Guitar
Years active	1972 — present
Labels	Capitol Records Millennium Records Pope Music Drive On Records, V2 Records
Associated acts	Roberta Flack, Don McLean
Website	http://www.lorilieberman.com/

Lori Lieberman (born November 15, 1951) is an American singer-songwriter who accompanies herself on guitar and piano. She first came to public attention in the early 1970s with a series of albums on Capitol Records, one of which featured the first recording of "Killing Me Softly With His Song". After a long hiatus, she resumed her recording career in the mid-1990s.

Of Jewish background, Lieberman, the middle sibling of three sisters, spent her childhood and adolescence travelling between California and Switzerland consequent to her father's career in chemical engineering. Though she has acknowledged the positive aspects of having an international upbringing, it is the drawbacks - a sense of alienation and not fitting in - that subsequently became a recurring motif on her albums, first apparent in "House Full of Women" (from Becoming) and "Straw Colored Girl" (from Straw Colored Girl) and most recently on the title track of her eleventh album, Bend Like Steel.

Lieberman began singing and composing at a young age, simultaneously acquiring a taste for French singers and songwriters as well as American rock and pop music. The latter passion was fed by an older sister who would return from trips to the U.S. with albums by Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen and Jefferson Airplane.

Shortly after she returned to America to study in her late teens, Lieberman was signed to a production, recording and publishing deal struck between Capitol Records and songwriters Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel. Lieberman's contributions to the process were occasionally credited during this period of her career, most notably on "My Lover Do You Know" which appeared on her first album, 1972's Lori Lieberman, and which was singled out for praise by Billboard magazine.

In the gap between her first and second albums, "Killing Me Softly With His Song", a track from Lieberman's debut, was recorded by Roberta Flack - becoming a US #1 and international hit and rapidly overshadowing Lieberman's own, more understated original which had until that point been gaining traction on radio. Undeterred, Lieberman returned in 1973 with Becoming, her first album to achieve a placing on the Billboard Top 200.

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