The Extraordinary Legacy of Roberta Flack Continues With "Eternally"
Published
The Extraordinary Legacy of Roberta Flack
Continues With “Eternally”
Previously Unreleased New Song
Marks First Release
Since GRAMMY Award Winning Songstress’s
Passing Earlier This Year
“Eternally” Heralds Upcoming, New Digital Release
Arriving Later This Year
NEW YORK – The extraordinary legacy of the late, great Roberta Flack continues with the premiere of “Eternally,” a previously unreleased song that exemplifies the grace, intelligence, and sophistication that defined her multiple GRAMMY® Award-winning career for more than five decades. Marked by Flack’s impassioned vocal performance and its powerful message of love everlasting, the newly unveiled “Eternally” represents the first musical release from the groundbreaking artist since her passing earlier this year. Recorded in 1997 and produced by Flack’s longtime associates Jerry Barnes, Suzanne Koga, and Joan Martin, the full version of “Eternally” will be showcased on a specially curated collection featuring favorite songs from Flack’s archives, newly remixed and remastered for ATMOS, arriving digitally for the first time later this year.
Click Here to Listen to “ETERNALLY”
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An unparalleled and deeply individualistic song stylist, arranger, and songwriter, Roberta Flack was a truly singular talent whose intimate music was unbounded by genre or even racial stereotypes and thus uniquely capable of crossing all international and cultural barriers. The new song was written by Jerry Barnes and his sister, the late Katreese Barnes. Both were proteges of Flack’s who was so impressed with their musical prowess that she helped bring them to New York from North Carolina in the late 1980s. Flack often sang “Eternally” in concert and even recorded it with the Barnes duo and much of her band and background singers in 1997. While Flack said many times that she wanted to release the song, it never made it into an outgoing project.
The song’s lyrical hook, “You will stay inside my heart, in the middle of my heart; you will stay inside my heart, eternally” says it all. Flack’s fans now have a chance to enjoy another classic Love song from this legendary musician and singer who is gone, but still spreading her message of Love and warmth.
ABOUT ROBERTA FLACK:
A four-time GRAMMY® Award winner, 13-time GRAMMY® nominee, and GRAMMY® Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Roberta Flack bridged myriad genres with elegance, insight, and originality on a groundbreaking series of hit singles and top charting LPs for more than five extraordinary decades. “I didn’t try to be a soul singer, a jazz singer, a blues singer – no category,” she once wrote. “My music is my expression of what I feel and believe in a moment.”
Her incomparable body of work boasts such chart-topping classics as 1973’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Her Face” and 1974’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” – both of which saw Flack make history as the only solo artist ever to win two consecutive GRAMMY® Awards for “Record of the Year” – along with the #1 hit, “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” and hit duets with fellow artists including Donny Hathaway (“Where Is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You”), Peabo Bryson (“Tonight I Celebrate My Love”) and Maxi Priest (“Set the Night to Music”).
Among her countless accolades, Flack was one of the first inductees into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame and received such honors as the Jazz Foundation of America’s prestigious Clark & Gwen Terry Award for Courage, the Town Hall Friend of the Arts Award, the Black Girls Rock! Lifetime Achievement Award, the DAR Women in American History Award, and an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music. A committed advocate of music education, Flack co-authored the autobiographical children’s book, The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music (Random House, 2023) and founded the Roberta Flack School of Music at the Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx, providing an innovative and inspiring music education program to underprivileged students free of charge. Additionally, her Roberta Flack Foundation supports animal welfare and helps children, especially girls of color, with their education. One of the greatest songstresses of our era, Roberta Flack left us on February 24, 2025 but her timeless music and remarkable life story will surely continue to inspire and move generations of listeners to come.
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