Sam Fischer is on the ride of a lifetime. The Sydney-born, LA-based songwriter and performer has been chipping away at a music career for the better part of a decade, co-writing tracks for artists such as Ciara and Keith Urban and releasing a number of solo singles.
Until recently, however, Fischer’s solo career had failed to gather much steam, leading the label that released his 2018 EP, Not a Hobby, to cut him from their roster just months after its release.
But things started to change in late 2019 when the stripped-back Not a Hobby single, ‘This City’, began spreading like wildfire on TikTok. This led to a deal with RCA Records for Fischer, who officially re-released ‘This City’ in December 2019. The song has since achieved double platinum sales certification in Australia and gone gold in the US and UK. In fact, such is the scale of Fischer’s newfound success and status that his latest single, ‘What Other People Say’, features none other than Demi Lovato.
Written before the international breakthrough of ‘This City’, Fischer describes ‘What Other People Say’ as an honest song drawn from the realisation that he hadn’t become the person he thought he would when he was younger. “It’s a tough realisation,” he says, “but something a lot of people feel.”
‘What Other People Say’ emerged out of a period of darkness in Fischer’s life, but that hasn’t stopped it from having global appeal. The anthemic pop song has racked up more than 50 million streams since its release in February and was included on Lovato’s latest album, Dancing with the Devil… the Art of Starting Over.
The Brag spoke to Fischer about writing ‘What Other People Say’, how he linked up with Lovato and the crossover success of ‘This City’.
The Brag: You wrote ‘What Other People Say’ before ‘This City’ became a massive hit. How hopeless were you feeling and what was fuelling those feelings?
Sam Fischer: It was almost a song that didn’t happen because the session that I went to to write the song was the second day of a two-day session with another artist who I was writing for, but they just decided to not come.
I was insecure about being dropped from a label and not really being in the position that I thought I would be when I was younger. Them not turning up really triggered something in me and I took it quite personally. It was the cherry on top of a shit cake that had been my last five years in LA.
TB: You could’ve spat the dummy and gone home, but instead you delved into those feelings and turned them into a song. Tell me about that process.
SF: Every writing session is like a therapy session, so my co-writer Geoff [Warburton] and I, we just started talking about who we are and where we are and things that we’ve done that we’re not proud of because other people told us that we should do that.
I don’t know what it says about me that all my best songs come from my darkest moments, but when words fail me speaking, I write them down in songs and it helps me understand it a bit more. So my hat’s off to the artist who didn’t turn up, because if they did it probably wouldn’t have been written.
TB: Who were the other people whose opinions had such a persuasive influence on you? Were they real people or just voices in your head?
SF: Absolutely they’re real people. People who just have opinions. Social media’s a really scary place and anyone has the power to say whatever they want and it’s hard to not take things personally, especially as someone who was a little lost and didn’t really have legs to stand on in the music industry at the time.
TB: The song revolves around the hook, “Now I’m all fucked up out in LA ‘Cos I care more about what other people say.” I sense some regret in those lines.
SF: I was just acting a certain way, going to certain parties, doing certain things that I was not proud of, just feeling like I was letting people down. For my whole life a lot of people had high expectations for me and I’m very grateful for that and thankful that people expect a lot for me, but not meeting that expectation is something that really hits me hard.
After being dropped from a label, it’s like a horrible breakup and I just felt like a massive failure. So I felt like, maybe these people who are talking shit about me are right and I was starting to believe them and trying to do everything I could other than be myself to please them.
TB: Between writing ‘What Other People Say’ and its release, you had an international hit with ‘This City’, signed with a major label and appeared on a bunch of US talk shows. There is something amusing about that trajectory in light of the themes discussed in ‘What Other People Say’.
Watch Sam Fischer, Demi Lovato – What Other People Say (Official Video)
SF: It’s pretty cool. I’ve worked really, really hard to get where I am, but it’s been funny. A lot of people have been like, “How’s it feel? You’re this overnight success,” and I’ve been saying, “It’s taken ten years of gruelling work to become an overnight success.” But I’ll take it – I’ll take success next to my name any day of the week.
TB: Demi takes the central role, singing the opening verse and hitting the high notes in the chorus. How comfortable were you about handing over so much of the song to another vocalist?
SF: The song ended up being sent to [Lovato’s manager] Scooter Braun and he showed it to Demi. Who am I to say no to that? I respect her so much as one of the
best in the game. Knowing that when she heard it, she connected with it and she told me she cried after listening to it and she wanted to be on it, I just felt like, if I’m able to give words to someone who’s trying to express something and we can do that together, then why not?
TB: You probably wouldn’t have had this opportunity without the success of ‘This City’. The song had been out for a while before it took off, but did you always feel there was something special about it?
SF: The day that I wrote ‘This City’, I did not want to be in the studio. I was disillusioned, I had just been through a really rough year of working with someone who was kind of abusive and ‘This City’ was like a diary entry.
I remember being in the session with the co-writer and producer and they wanted to do something that was a little different. I have this voice memo of them going off and getting excited about something and me sitting there and under my breath writing ‘This City’.
It was a quick write, I did about two or three takes for the vocal and I was just like, “I don’t want to be here anymore,” and I left. And I remember getting the song back from the producer later that night and listening to it and it was non-stop – I couldn’t stop listening to it.
