Cody Fry’s music is simultaneously familiar and breathtakingly innovative. The Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter and composer first released his work in 2012 with his debut album audio: cinema. Now, a decade later, Fry’s music has continued to evolve in ways that perhaps even Fry didn’t see coming.
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This year, Fry’s 2017 song “I Hear A Symphony” randomly went viral on TikTok and sent the artist’s Spotify streams into the millions. “The way I describe TikTok is that it’s the social media equivalent of a nuclear bomb,” Fry tells American Songwriter. “When it’s about to blow, you best get out the way. Truly I’ve never experienced anything like it in my career. The velocity in which it can propel things into virality is just stunning.
“It was not my intention to be viral on TikTok, it just sort of happened, and the way it translated into streaming numbers for me has been a huge blessing to my career. So I think TikTok is amazing, truly. I also just love how weird it is. It feels like people really express themselves in super genuine ways, while I feel other social networks have this mask of shininess, that this is my brand I’m putting forward. TikTok is just so weird, and I just love it,” he concludes.
This sudden reaction to “I Hear A Symphony” was equally stunning and encouraging for the artist. Fry has been involved with music for his entire life (his father was an orchestral composer and jingle writer). Now, it seemed like he was uncovering yet another dimension of the music realm that could take his career to the next level.
So, on January 21, Fry released his latest album titled Symphony Sessions. The record combines the polished high drama of orchestration with the bubbly elements of pop music to create an irresistible sonic adventure.
“Coming off of the viral success of ‘I Hear A Symphony,’ I wanted to deliver more music in that orchestral genre to my new fans. So I thought I needed to create a project that allows me a vehicle to create more music like that. That’s how the Symphony Sessions were born,” Fry says. “It’s a combination of new orchestrated arrangements of a few older songs, some newer songs, and then a cover of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and collaboration with my friend Ben Rector. All of that has been stuff I’ve been wanting to do, but this success and need to bring these new fans into my music further is what got me to pull the trigger on creating Symphony Sessions.”
The collection of songs is simply exquisite, delicious even. And when it came to deciding which songs would be on the record, each track was picked with incredible intentionality. For instance, the cover of “Eleanor Rigby” has been on Fry’s radar for years.
“It was first introduced to me in the 6th grade,” Fry explains. “We had to do a project called The Lyric Project where we had to analyze a famous song and decide what we felt the lyrics meant. I was assigned ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ so the song has always had a special place in my mind. And as I was living through the pandemic, the refrain, ahhh look at all the lonely people, just kept coming to me. And I thought maybe this could be a really cool way to bring people together to create music during the pandemic. So I created the orchestral arrangement, and I also decided I wanted to use a choir.
“Obviously, choirs were not meeting at this point so I decided to enlist my fans and say, ‘Hey if you want to be a part of a choir experience then send me your files, and I’ll compile them,’ and that’s how we created this virtual chair that’s a part of the ‘Eleanor Rigby’ cover. The production process was incredibly fun. We recorded a huge orchestra at Ocean Way Studios in Nashville. It was just a joy to put together,” he says.
Another song on the record, “Underground,” also holds a special place in Fry’s musical mind. “It’s about a guy who gets hit by a train but it’s actually about life, and realizing how amazing life and love can be. And the metaphor being used in this case is being hit by a train,” Fry says.
He continues, “I think that the combination of ‘Caves’ and ‘Underground’ is one of my favorite things I’ve ever made. I think the orchestration for ‘Underground,’ the way that it grows, the little arranging techniques I used to express the lyrics… it was a really proud moment for me. It just felt like everything came together in a way that was really fortuitous. Sometimes things just come together really well, and with this arrangement of ‘Underground,’ that is what happened.”
Listen to the full Symphony Sessions, below.
Photo courtesy of Missing Piece Group.
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