9 Famous Songs That Are Actually Responses To Other Famous Songs

8. Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly

What is it a response to? Don McLean - Empty Chairs

When you hear the words "strumming my pain with his fingers", you likely don't think of the guy who wrote American Pie. (The song, not the movie. Wait...either.)

But you should. Originally popularized by Roberta Flack (and brought back into vogue by The Fugees two decades later), Killing Me Softly was first written and recorded by Lori Leiberman after seeing Don McClean perform at a club in Los Angeles called The Troubadour. In fact, the song was initially called Killing Me Softly With His Blues and was inspired by the heartache McLean expressed in the song Empty Chairs.

For those unfamiliar with the tune, Empty Chairs is about a lost love, the kind that makes a person advise every bartender they meet for the next ten years never to take a relationship for granted, and invoke some iteration of the old saying "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".

Though it's well-worn lyrical territory, Lieberman really connected to the sentiment because it strongly echoed an experience she'd just had with her own failed relationship. When everyone else had left the club after McLean's set, Lieberman stayed and scrawled a short poem on a bar napkin, which she would later expand into the beautiful, heartbreaking song we know today.

So technically, Lauryn Hill should be thanking Roberta Flack AND Don McLean for having a career.