Roberta Flack | Through the Shattered Lens

Roberta Flack, RIP.

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song

I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him, to listen for a while
And there he was, this young boy
A stranger to my eyes

I felt all flushed with fever
Embarrassed by the crowd
I felt he found my letters and read each one out loud
I prayed that he would finish
But he just kept right on

He sang as if he knew me
In all my dark despair
And then he looked right through me as if I wasn’t there
And he just kept on singing
Singing clear and strong

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me

He was strumming my pain
Yeah, he was singing my life
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

Songwriters: Norman Gimbel / Charles Fox

I was going to pick another heavy metal video for today but then Lisa told me that today is Martin Scorsese’s birthday and I realized which video I had to pick. I was actually surprised to see that no one had ever picked Bad for music video of the day in the past. This is one of those videos that epitomized an era and it was directed by Martin Scorsese.

Here’s the long version, which was rarely played on MTV.

Here’s the shorter version for the Too Long, Didn’t Watch crowd.

You can’t fault Scorsese’s gritty direction, especially in the early black-and-white half of the video. Michael Jackson is not really convincing as someone who was ever considered to be “bad,” especially when he’s going up against Wesley Snipes, but there’s not much Scorsese could have done about that. Snipes is not the only familiar actor to appear in this video. The drug dealer is played by Paul Calderon, who played the bartender in Pulp Fiction. The voice of Michael Jackson’s mother is supplied by Roberta Flack. Cinematographer Michael Chapman and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, two regular Scorsese collaborators, also worked on this video. The script was written by novelist Richard Price.

I can’t hear this song without thinking about Weird Al Yankovic.

Enjoy!