Sibilance

Grade 8 music, 1974, and Miss Matthews has just introduced us to Roberta Flack. We are hers for the next 40 minutes, and she’s determined to teach this captive choir to sing Killing Me Softly with His Song. She plays our first attempt back at us from a big reel-to-reel she’s hooked up to the music room’s sound system, so that we can hear for ourselves how harsh all the s-words sound. The trick she tells us it to sing them as if they start with the letter Z, and so by the second take we’re already zinging with ztyle.

Inspired by Wrapped Up Like a Douche. Image by Atlantic Records.