Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stones hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversialist.
I'm Britney Spanos and I'm Rob Sheffield.
We're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great. This week, we're going into Killing Me Softly.
This is the only song on the list that has two different versions that are on the list. The Roberta nineteen seventy three version is at number two hundred and seventy three and the Fuji's nineteen ninety six version is at number three hundred and fifty nine. Both were Grammy winning number one hits, massive during their times of release and both ended up making the list.
Amazing and two very emotional versions of a very emotional song.
Yeah, and obviously there's a lot of I feel like a lot of people always attribute to roberta Flax version being the first. I kind of wanted to get into the story behind the making of Killing Me Softly with his song, which is it?
Like I was reading about it, I.
Was like, this is so kind of crazy, going back to the original and sort of the controversy over the lyrics and the writing credits over the years, but the original version came out a year prior to A Bird of Flax, which was Lori Lieberman who was nineteen when
she first wrote it. And she wrote it actually during a Don McLean concert and was watching him perform the ballad empty Chairs and was just like so moved by it that she started writing on her napkin during the show, this song that's basically about Don McLean singing this like heart wrenching ballad.
It was like he found her letters and read each one out of loud. Lori Lieberman's version, like you said, that's a whole amazing story.
Yeah, and it's I mean that version is very very traditionally like soft rock. And it is crazy how many lives this song has lived, just even sonically, I mean, even by the standards of covers and how covers can have different lives. I mean, that's something that we've covered so much that we see constantly. It is so wild, how desparate each version of this song has been. Specifically these like three main you know, tent pole versions of killing Me Softly that existed.
And Laurie Lieberman's version. How does it sound to you compared to the Roberta Flag version that became so massive.
It's so much more understated and like subdued. Like Roberta's kind of has this like, I think, like Laurie's almost sounds closer to the Lauren Hill sort of vocal of like that sort of like like kind of desperation and sadness, and Roberta's feels like almost like a little bit there's
this sort of like jazziness and like upbeatness. I guess just because she lifts the song a little bit more than Laurie's version, which is again just like much more like stripped down and very very classic like seventies soft rock version.
Funny and so obscure. It's so funny that a song with two enormously famous versions and the one by the author the original is barely known at all. Yeah, it's comparable, I guess in that way too, Betty Davis, A is a song that you know, Jackie DeShannon recorded years before it was a hit. But nobody knows that Jackie desh in seventies soft rock version, Yeah, they know the eighties Kim Carnes synth version.
Yeah.
Very similar story with Killing Me Softly.
Yeah, And I mean even Lori isn't credited on the both the ROBERTA. Flack and the Fuji's version. The original song was composed by Charles Fox, who was actually most notable, which I love learning this. He did a lot of the like Sunshine pop scores for TV shows in the seventies, like The Love Boat, and he did the original music for Monday Night Football.
And she co wrote the.
Lyrics with Norman Gamble, who was, you know, a songwriter at the time, and he was doing a lot of movie themes love Oscar Nominde movie themes. So it's the three of them that had worked on this song originally and worked on her first album and work sort of a songwriting trio together and had a big falling out. Norman and Laurie were dating for a minute while he was married. They like fell out by the end of
the seventies and then by the nineties. The craziest part of it was that Norman and Charles ended up basically denying a story that they had been saying for years of the donal Clean origin of this, like the donal Clean concert, how Laurie was inspired by it and basically tried to erase her from the entire history of the song that wouldn't exist without her.
Yeah, very strange how this story turned. For the first twenty five years after ROBERTA. Flax's version became a hit, there was no dispute, no controversy about the origin story of Killing Me Softly. It was a very famous origin story. Everybody knew that the song had been written about Don McLean seeing him live, and everybody agreed on the story
of how this song came to be. Yeah, and then in the nineties, legal disputes completely changed that, and yes, the story completely changed about the authorship of the song.
Yeah.
So I want to make sure that we give our proper credit to Laurie Lieberman, who, of course, again this great song that has lived a million and one amazing lives, and I'm sure we'll have another several one hundred more
in the future. And she's so much the origin of this and was essentially almost erased from the history of the song, and you know, has been in more recent years doing more interviews and talking about it and kind of reclaiming a lot of that legacy, which I think is great because she should obviously be given her proper due for writing this, Like brilliantly devastating and gorgeous song that has had you know, many beautiful covers again that exist on our list.
Now, Yeah, it's hard to think of another song that famous with such a disputed origin story and that the different sides just do not agree. Closest thing I could think of is Wider Shade of Pale. But they both agree who did what, they argue over what constitutes songwriting. So even though the writers of Wider Shade of Pale have been in court for decades and will be for decades, there's still no dispute over who did what whereas this song, it's an argument that will never be settled.
Yeah, And of course, the Laura Lieberman version that had come out, she released it as a single on her first album, and it was released into the world in its first version by her, and it was actually a Roberta flat hearing it while she was on an airplane for the first time where she heard the song in sort of like the in flight music, and that kind of spurred this like couple of years that she was really obsessed with this song and covering it and like
really really wanting to record it and playing it and you know, just kind of being in love with this version that she had heard on a flight.
ROBERTA. Flack was on such a role. She really created her own pop style with this super calm, super jazzy, but very understated soul that was very pop, very torchy,
and she did it without any kind of historyonics. It's funny that in a song like killing Me Softly or any of her massive hits, really the first time ever I Saw Your Face is another great example where she takes this Celtic folk song by You and McCall and turns it into completely different song that's all her own, this real soul soliloquy yeah, and her seventy soul sound.
There was nobody else who's sounded quite like it and had that smooth but super emotional tone, and she just really brought that home with killing Me Softly.
Yeah.
And the origin of her even recording it I loved, which was that she was touring with Quincy Jones at the time and came out for her encore and then she needed one more song, and she decided to sing the song that she had covered a few times before and had wanted to record and just didn't like the original kind of version of the recording that she had done, and Quincy was just like, you can't keep singing the song if you're just not gonna release it, And then
she did and it became a number one hit. It was number one for five weeks. It wanted Grammy, it was you know, it was just like a massive moment for Roberta that you know has lived on in it in that form for many many generations and years. I mean, it's just like her voice sounds incredible on it, and it's just like absolutely gorgeous and kind of just an instant classic.
Really, it's her own distinctive sound. What are some of your favorites from her great seventies.
Run Ooh, I mean I think like the first time I ever saw your face was like it's that's like a big one for me, Like, I love, love love that one.
That's like a I love her voice on that one so much.
It's amazing.
Yeah, it builds as it repeats, Yeah, and she really underplays it in a really beautiful and emotional way. My favorite is with Donnie Hathaway, where is the Love?
Yeah?
What a song? Love hearing those two voices together a real like archetypal seventies R and B duo.
And isn't Donnie singing background too on Killing Me Softly?
As well?
Yeah?
Yes, their voices connect in so many amazing ways. Where's the Love is my sentimental favorite. Yeah, they both have the same question, where is the love? Neither of them knows. They keep asking each other through the song. As far as we know, this conversation has been going on for hours before they turned on the tape recorder and kept going for hours. But she had that super suave sort
of sound. Yeah, that was perfect for a song like Killing Me Softly, which is very emotional and very uh, very confessional.
Yeah, and you know, even just like her version, especially comparing it to the original version, and just especially because they came out only only a couple of years in between each other. You know, Roberta is just kind of she makes it like a little bit, you know, a little bit faster of a song, and she adds sort of like all these kind of She's so classically trained, so you know, all these elements of both, you know, her her own kind of classical and jazz training as
a musician kind of brought into this. But originally was just a very kind of standard classic soft rock moment and makes it this like impeccable R and B sound.
It's just like really stunning.
Yes, of course, two decades later the song sort of it has a couple of revivals. One there's like a like a club version of roberta Flax version that ends up sort of you know, having a bit of a moment in the mid nineties. And of course the Fujis recorded for the Score and this was their sophomore album, a big, big breakthrough for the band, and it is I mean just like again, a totally different story launches.
With the Fuji's cover of Killing Me Softly.
Which version were you into first?
Fujis for sure, both like the Fujis and Lauren Hill as a solo artist. It was just like inescapable in the nineties, like that was just like something that not even just like hearing on the radio, like you were just like hearing constantly like out and about that was like music that very much soundtracked, you know, every summer and was just.
Like hard to escape.
So I feel like that song was one that I heard a lot and was the first time I'd ever heard that song, and then was very like surprised even to hear the Bird of Flack version I think probably later in high school college sometime sometime later, but was shocked to kind of hear this other version of the song that I just kind of assumed just belonged to Lauren Hill and her voice and had been hers for the entirety of its life.
Yeah, and such a departure for the fujis Yeah really wild that you know? The score was absolutely perfect album, Yeah, stacked from end to end and killing Me Softly sounded like nothing else on the album. It sounded more like what Lauren Hill ended up doing first, Yeah solo album, Miseducation, But you know, it's basically Lauren Hill's solo as an R and B singer, which is very different from what she's doing what the group is doing all through the rest of the album.
Yeah, And this the original idea for even covering the song came from Prase and the group. They were kind of inspired by a tribe called Quest and sort of the breakbeat production that tribe had become very known for, and so they wanted to do their own take on it, and they actually wanted to change the lyrics at first, and they wanted to make it sort of a song about like anti poverty, anti drugs, sort of you know,
just like modernize the lyrics in some way. But we're denied by Charles and Norman, who sort of again were the only credited composer and songwriter for the song at the time, but they ended up doing sort of the straightforward lyrical cover of the song and really updating it
making it sound super fresh. I mean, it still sounds super fresh, as you know, it's still sound it's like an extremely timeless kind of take on this once soft rock then sort of like jazzy soul song and then you know, now this kind of like break beat hip hop like moment from from nineteen ninety six.
Yeah, it's fantastic. It's funny that they don't really depart from the original arrangement much. You know, they don't add any any rapping, any interludes like that. Yeah, it's pretty much singing the song straight with, like you said, the original words. The main revision is the way she pronounces boy.
And one time.
Yes, one time is great. I mean there's a lot of inventive touches, the one time and the cinar, yeah, which is really kind of fantastic. It's gotta be my favorite nineties hip hop sitar moment.
Yeah, I do find myself when I'm listening to the ROBERTA. Flack version, like in my head adding the one time.
It definitely sounds Yes, it always sounds a little off without the one Yeah.
I'm like, it's kind of you know how the song was always meant to be me and Donnie Hathaway in the back.
To Yeah, you know, like White Cup should have been on stage with don McClain when you were singing, just going one time after each chorus. But it's well because that's really the only part of the song that is a detail that says, By the way, this singer is in a group and they're a hip hop.
There are other members in this group. Don't forget they.
Do not do covers of seventy soul songs as their main musical formula.
Yeah, I really love Lauren's vocal performance on the song, and like you said, like it does feel so much like this like launching of what we would hear from
her as a solo artist. It feels so connected to not connected in a way where it feels like it should be a miseducation, but definitely feels like that, like step towards mis Education that we would get a few years later, but I mean she definitely leans even more into sort of that kind of like yearning element of it, and like she's really really deep and like you could really hear it in the way that she's singing this song, which again is like a big part of a lot
of the songs on mis Education have so much of that kind of tone of yearning that she channels so well on this particular song.
The fact that this song was, you know, a song that was a huge pop hit for the Fujis, who didn't really need a pop hit for a massive hit, the score was going to be a blockbuster album for them, even without killing me softly.
Oh yeah, I mean Ready or Not Alone?
Yeah, absolute family Business. Yeah, that's the killer on that album. I could never understand why that never became any kind of hit, never seemed to get enough airplay. But Family Business, that to me is like that is the Fuji song. Yeah, my favorite of favorites.
Yeah, and I mean again, this version becomes a number one hit when's the Grammy, It like ends up becoming sort of no in no way sort of even like on a different level than the Bird of black version, which again was such a monster of its own hit in its own time. And then we have another version that completely again like reinvents it, remakes it and like is in its own way in the mid nineties subdly this number one Grammy winning hit.
At that time.
Yeah, and a hit that never goes away. Yeah, It's always everywhere, it always fits in, it never sounds stated.
Yeah.
Are there other songs like that where they have sort of like that kind of first number one sort of run. I guess like that occurred and then kind of comes back as a cover version that ends up being successful.
Example comes to mind is Always on My Mind by the Pet Shop Boys, Yeah, which was huge hit for Elvis, just as a sort of you know, vagacy ballad.
Yeah.
And then a much bigger hit, the Country version by Willie Nelson, which seemed like it was always going to be a definite version. And then this totally crazy, hyper high energy eighties pop disco version by the Pet Shop Boys, And I love how strange it is that it is the same song. They're not messing with the arrangement. It's like killing me softly. But every version has such a different mood and without changing anything. Fundamental or structural about
the song. They just make it feel completely different. Yeah, So I don't even think of that as a cover. They're just like different hit versions.
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess it also reminded me because we had talked about this song very recently, was the first cut of The Deepest as like another sort of like having sort of like the Cat Stevens than Rod Stewart than Cheryl Crowe versions kind of existed and being so faithful to, you know, the original and like what the original song sounds like, but finding kind of their own pockets of what that song could be or kind of pulling out different emotions.
From the lyrics.
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, it's wild when that happens, and when a song can have another life for two different singers where it's not a one shot in either career. And with Killing Me Softly, Lauren Hill was already a star on the hip hop level, already about to break out. The Fuji's were absolutely going to break out with pop with this. Withbird of Flack, it was one hit among many for her. Yeah, it's funny that it's a song that is so distinctive in both their catalogs. Yeah, but
definitely a song that is part of their story. Yeah, a long story.
Yeah, added to so much of their stories, and not even just like built the story, but kind of like added like a new chapter to already who they were or who.
They were becoming at those times.
Yeah.
Do you have a favorite sort of other fujis or Lauren Hill vocal moment or song?
It's well because for her soul vocals, I mean, she has such a distinctive voice, whether she's rapping or singing. Yeah, and there's really nothing else like it. And that was always wild with Killing Me Softly, such a familiar song that she puts such an original twist on without changing melody, without changing the words, just because the tone of her voice, like you said, so yearning. I love when she raps and does that in her voice. Her vocal on Lost Ones, Yeah,
is just such a phenomenal vocal. She's rapping, not singing, but that same kind of yearning is in it, even though she's talking very tough. It's not a yearning lyric, but you can hear that yearning in her voice in that song.
Yeah, I'm always partial to the yearning song. So I'm a big fan of X Factor by her, which again similar kind of those similar like family of you know, vocal performances from her that that Killing Me Softly.
Kind of has.
But I just I think that that is just one of her her best office another one that you know, even in sample form, has had many, many different lives and covers. You know, ifyonce has covered a hit, drake A sampled it like it's you know, has sort of these different kind of resurgences over I mean, I guess, especially in the last ten years of existing, it is amazing.
Miseducation of Learn Hill has to be one of the most front loaded albums of all time. Weld also that the Fuji's version very anomalous for a hip hop group in the nineties, very serious hip hop group with a lot of underground ties. A hit like this didn't affect their credibility in any way. Yeah, they didn't complain about it the way you know that an artist is going to often complain about their pop breakthrough hit. This just
really seemed to fit every audience. It really seemed to connect, is the real thing.
Yeah, did you say which one you liked the more, ROBERTA Flack or the Fujis.
Now I was avoiding the question because it's so painful, the push come to shove, The Lauren Hill version, the Fuji's version, Yeah, that's the one that's when I think of the song. I think of that version yearning in her voice. She is so yearning. ROBERTA. Flack is so calm. They're both so powerful in that. And yet the Lauren Hill version with again that one time, which really is a canonical part of the song for me.
Yeah, And what are some other versions that you've heard over the years are really like, Like, I recently heard Jenny from Black Pink cover it and I loved her take on the song as well.
It's so good. It's such an odd pick.
Yeah, I think that that was such a great version. It becomes such a standard for a lot of singers to go to this song because it is such a great vocal song. And you know, I feel like American Idol, and you know, a lot of singing competitions, a lot of singers gravitate towards it.
It's just amazing a song that is so powerful about the act of listening to music.
Yeah.
Next, we'll be joined by Rolling Stone senior writer David Brown. We are joining now by Rolling Stone senior writer David Brown.
David, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me here. Glad to be thank David. Thanks Robing Brittany.
I mean, we both answered the very difficult choice of which version of Killing Me.
Softly is your favorite? So I want to know your your answer.
My favorite is still the ROBERTA. Flack original. It's probably because it's the first one I heard. Just maybe not the case with some people, but I remember, I mean I loved it at the time, even though it was like this little kid and you know, quote unquote soft rock type songs didn't work usually my thing. Most of us didn't know the backstory behind any of it. It was just this like beautiful flowing song on the radio. That wordless part she sings in it is just transcendent.
It just like brings it up to another level. You weren't sure which exactly she was singing about. But yeah, that's the one I still listened to, even though the Fuji's.
Is great, but you know, just the early one was the one that connected with me.
And when did you hear the original version, the Lori Liberman version.
Oh, probably not till many years later.
Yeah, that record, which which was the first version of it of that song, you know, kind of came and went. It wasn't a hit or anything. And so even back then and back in the day, Lorid Liberman was a cult figure at best. You know, you just never heard her songs at all on the radio. You might see the records in the record store, but like, oh, who's that you know or another singer songwriter. So it wasn't until many years later, when you know, YouTube or whatever
where things were more accessible. I heard it and I was like, oh, wow, like this is you can see how reverta Flak re arranged it, but the essence of the song is kind of all there. I thought it was really fascinating. And then, of course we all many years as the years went on, we all learned the whole backstory with Lourie Lieberman, which is a whole other fascinating thing that, like I said, we didn't know at the time.
It came out later.
Yeah, what do you sort of remember kind of like how that exploded, especially in the late nineties with with Lori and the other songwriters.
Yeah, I mean I vaguely remember reading an interview with her with Lori Liberman sometime in the late nineties.
I think it was after the Fuji's version.
So I think by then we all knew it was about Don McClain, but you know, her going into more detail about her relationship with gimbal and Fox. And then around the same time, Charles Fox, who Don McLean or threatened to sue Don mcclin for putting on his website that he was the inspiration for that song. That's when I really all started coming out, I think, And.
Can you tell us little bit more about the lawsuit that happened with Don.
I think it was just a threat.
Yeah, And again I think it was again after the Fujis and he put something on his website that he was the inspiration for the song, and it's actually still there to some extent on his site. I just checked it today. He has a little chronological kind of timeline and there's a photo of him with Lori Liberman ten
twenty years ago hanging out. I think the songwriters at the time, we're trying to rewrite history a bit and kind of write out the fact that he inspired Lorie Lieberman, which would then sort of write her out of the story because she had sort of given an interview dissing them. So it seemed like it was maybe their way of trying to get back at him by having Don McLean take the thing off his website, and so they threatened.
One of them threatened the lawsuit, and Don McLean pulled out this article from the Daily News from nineteen seventy three in which Lord Lieberman has asked, oh, you know who's this about, and she says Don McLean, I saw him at the Troubert in Los Angeles last year, blah blah blah, and then I think the whole thing just
kind of went away. But you know, I was fascinated with the I guess what we'd call the umbrella term of soft rock, which would be like singer songwriters and yacht rock, because the more you dig into some of this stuff, you realize that sometimes neither the singers nor the songs, or that laid back and mellow and it's like, oh, that troubadour who was nice not to be a heroin at or some complete neuronic mess, or you know, you're listening to a yacht rock song like Ride like the
Wind and it's like it's moving along vialuce you read the lyrics, Oh, it's kind of like a gangster thing about a guy within the run with the gun and the crime the Steel. There's steely dance songs. Of course, they're about drug dealers and stuff. A soft rock is always so soft and mellow and and so there's something about this whole saga of killing me softly that is part of that tradition of like, oh, it's a really
pretty song, and it is. It's a beautiful song, and then you learn more about it and you're like, oh, boy, that is one tangled, often twisted teal.
And you guys probably discuss the Fuji's version.
I imagine, like how they wanted to rewrite it and all that, and that was another you know, past thing twist and they weren't allowed to change the lyrics. It's a song that seems so kind of a gorgeous pop song that has this fraud history in the great tradition of the dark side of soft. I should do of Spotify playlist. You know what's also so interesting about this song is I went back and listened to so many of the covers and there's a whole slew of them.
Nancy Sinatra and Johnny Mathis and Perry Como, Anne Murray Bastile just did it like right like last year and plugged thing, and nobody messes with it. I mean the Fuji's had to be you know, they arrange slightly, but it's a song that people are very reverent about really, like you know, there's no kitschy ironic covers that I've come across. Maybe you guys have, but it seems like every version of it is very faithful, adheres to the kind of arrangement and the spirit of it. You know,
even if people change his song to her song. In some cases, that's about the biggest tweak, and I think it shows how that song has not just endured in the culture, but it's I don't want to call it sacred, that's too much, but I mean it's it's something that is a very meaningful song to lots of people, all about Don McLean, So go figure.
His second biggest impact.
And isn't it funny too? That was inspired but not just seeing him, but not by American Pie, but like a deep cut on the American Pie album called Empty Chairs, which is like and that was one of the first albums in my record collection. I have to say American Pie, so I know that song.
Well, the Don McLean song American pie that we all know inspired by Buddy Holly, and that this thing of songs about listening to songs.
Yeah, songs, yes, yes, which I guess is part of the backstory. And gimbal and Fox had some idea right of like, oh, let's let's write a song about how music can inspire you, and she was like, oh wait. Loyally, by coincidence, I saw Don McLean and.
To the point of like the reverence to the original, it is so fascinating with the fuji's wanting to change it, they still create something that is that feels like such a continuation of the story and of the song and how it had been in previous incarnations. But do you have any kind of thoughts on why people have sort of in later years and more recently still kind of maintained that and sort of maintained that idea of the song in its purest form when they cover it.
I think the fact that it's even taking Don McLean out of it and whatever's feeling once feelings are about Don McClain.
I think this.
Idea of seeing a performer hearing a song and having it so affect you and move you is a universal enduring the sentiment, you know, and I think that sort of transcends generations and genres. I think that must be an aspect of it. It's kind of a standard. I mean, it's an interesting structure. It has a verse chorus structure,
but it plays around with that a little bit. I mean, I was thought that it was so striking to people when the Fuji's version came out, because there wasn't anything quite like that at the time on the radio.
It's funny that her romantic songs like were the ones that didn't necessarily capture that quality in her voice quite as much as this one did.
Interesting, that's a good point.
The first time I ever saw your face, that's you know, Brittany was talking about that. That's her favorite ROBERTA Flex.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
What's fascinating is that I grew to love that song when I got older, and you look back and like the fact that that song was like a big pop hit.
You know, it was in a movie and that helped.
But I mean it's so like subdude and slow and like you know, it's it's got all the space in it, and it's it's kind of remarkable that that was like a top ten or whatever hit at the time.
It's kind of a miracle.
Yeah, and so repetitive verse for there's no chorus, there's no bridge. It structured like a folk song way.
It's just this slow, simmery thing all the way through it. And it was like I said, it didn't hit me at first, but I mean it when it did, it was like, Wow, this is really hypnotic, and you really just sit down and listen to that thing over.
And over again. And the other thing.
Maybe you guys already talked to all those other songs that gimbal and Fox wrote, like TV theme song, like Happy Days, wonder Woman, Vernon Shirley. It's like those guys wrote killing Me Softly.
It's one of bey On killing Me Softly. Their second most famous lyric is love Exciting and new Come be Expecting You, and.
The other one wonder Woman. Yeah, that's another catchy lyric of this.
Yeah, and I Got a Name by Jim Croch, which is actually a great song too.
That's one of my favorite Jim Croch songs. It blew my mind that that was their song and not Jim Crochy's, which is a compliment to their songwriting.
Right right, as well as to him.
They were real chameleons. I mean, I'll say that about them, and they could just adapt to whatever. You gotta write a TV theme, Oh good, you gotta write a kind of singer songwriter song. Okay, we'll do that gimbal translated, you know, golf Medpanima lyrics. I mean, it was just like these were kind of old school record business guys who are like, you do what you to do and you adapt to your times. It's kind of a rarity now think in the business and people to do that.
It was the Tim Panlly sort of tradition where you know, like absolutely gets done.
Absolutely, there's work to do, and you do the work and you don't worry if it's cool or not.
Thank you so much, David, Thank you.
Thanks guys. Is always a blast, real joy talking to always.
Thanks so much for listening to Rolling Stones five hundred Greatest Songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia. Written hosted by me Britney Spanis and Rob Sheffield. Executive produced by Gus Winner, Jason Fine, Alex Dale, and Christian Horde, and produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision by Eric Seiler.