There’s a certain kind of bravery in writing a song like “Fly Away” It’s not the loud, triumphant kind you see in movie montages; it’s quieter, lonelier, and far more honest. This is a song about grief, but more than that, it’s about surviving it. Shy-Anne Hovorka, an award-winning songwriter and educator from northern Ontario, has always worn her heart openly in her music. But “Fly Away” written in memory of her best friend, feels like she’s doing something riskier: she’s showing us what it sounds like when the heart cracks and then keeps beating anyway.
The song begins almost imperceptibly, a few notes of piano floating in like a memory you didn’t mean to revisit. Hovorka’s voice enters soft but deliberate, the kind of tone that suggests she’s not performing this so much as confessing it. There’s no studio polish here, no artifice to hide behind; just the raw tremor of someone trying to turn pain into something that makes sense. And somehow, she does. The production is simple but effective: a slow, swelling arrangement of strings and ambient textures that never crowd her vocals, just lift them, gently, as if the music itself is helping her carry the weight.
“Fly Away” doesn’t wallow. It lingers. It circles back on itself, the way grief does, not in big cinematic crescendos, but in small repetitions that hurt because they feel real. When she sings about loss, she’s not trying to make it pretty; she’s trying to make it true. The lyrics never reach for cheap catharsis or easy answers. Instead, they dwell in the space where absence becomes a kind of presence; that strange place where the person you’ve lost still exists in the air between words.
The accompanying video amplifies this quiet devastation. It’s filled with imagery of open skies, wind and motion; all those overused metaphors for release that, in this case, actually work, because you can tell she means them. This isn’t about letting go in a “self-help” kind of way. It’s about continuing to love someone who’s gone, and figuring out what to do with that love once it has nowhere to land.
What makes “Fly Away” stand out in Hovorka’s already impressive body of work is its restraint. Over six albums; Black ThunderBird, Interwoven Roots, Bones and beyond; she’s explored everything from pop-leaning anthems to orchestral folk hybrids. But here, she pares it all down. The song breathes. It’s just her, a piano, a ghost, and the faint suggestion that healing might be possible. In a music landscape obsessed with “big moments” and “viral hooks,” this track feels radical precisely because it refuses to perform its grief for applause.
And maybe that’s the point. “Fly Away” isn’t trying to fix you, or even comfort you in the traditional sense. It’s a mirror held up to loss, one that doesn’t promise that time will heal all wounds, but quietly insists that you can still live with them. The final chorus doesn’t explode; it exhales. By the end, Hovorka sounds less like she’s singing to her departed friend and more like she’s learning to exist with their memory; not as something that hurts, but as something that still, somehow, gives her strength.
If you’ve ever lost someone, “Fly Away” will hit you like a slow tide; not crashing all at once, but creeping in until you’re submerged. And when it’s over, it doesn’t feel like you’ve been drained; it feels like you’ve been understood. That’s rare. That’s powerful. And in a world that keeps demanding you “move on,” Shy-Anne Hovorka dares to make a song that says, simply, it’s okay if you can’t; just keep singing anyway.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
