How Guitar Gets Captured on Fly, the Song 叶枫 yieiori Took Into a Studio for the First Time
Written on a Tour of Northwest China and Recorded at Color Studio in Mianyang
The room that turned Fly into a record was Color studio in Mianyang, in China’s Sichuan province. It was there that 叶枫 yieiori took Fly into a studio for the first time. The indie folk song came out on 24 September 2022 as the closing track of the four-song INNER VOICE. It centres on the songwriter’s guitar, and by then it had been travelling with its writer for the best part of a decade.
叶枫 yieiori’s Fly sits in the playlist below, and the 叶枫 yieiori profile holds the rest of the coverage. The song came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Play it through once, then keep reading for how the session came together.
yieiori Wrote Fly on the Road Through Northwest China and Built the Hook Around One Word
In fact, Fly began a long way from any studio. In a note posted with the song’s video in 2023, yieiori explained the timing. yieiori wrote Fly around 2015, on the road for a run of shows across northwest China. Since then, the note adds, the creative road ahead has not always been clear. Songwriting, it says, is how the artist connects with the world.
That history shapes the hook. The title is a single word in English and a single character in Chinese, 飛. As a result, the whole song turns on it. Songplode covered the single in April 2025 and heard in it the memory of a songwriter watching birds rise. Yet the title never needs to spell that image out.
The Lyric Speaks to Anyone Pushed to the Margins and Asks Them to Keep Walking Forward
The lyric gives the image a purpose. Songplode says yieiori wrote Fly for anyone who has felt “overlooked or pushed to the margins in life or in love”. Brazil’s INDIEOCLOCK quoted a statement from yieiori about the song. It calls Fly more than a portrait of one person walking the outskirts of a city. It also asks listeners facing strange looks or mocking voices to keep moving forward. Each step away from those voices, it says, brings a person closer to becoming a light for themselves and others.
What makes that work as craft is the restraint. The song never asks for rescue, and it does not describe the people doing the mocking in any detail. Instead, it keeps its attention on the person walking, which lets a listener in any city step into the frame.
Color Studio Captures a First Session, With an International Ensemble Built Around the Guitar
The structure follows from the song’s origins. A tune that a singer carried around on tour had to survive a move into a room full of players. So the arrangement keeps the guitar at the centre. Songplode described the session as a series of firsts. It was the artist’s first time in a recording studio and first collaboration with an international ensemble. Its reviewer also heard the delicate strings of a sitar set against the folk instrumentation.
Other listeners heard the same balance from different angles. INDIEOCLOCK wrote about lively, surprising arrangements. Meanwhile, Mexico’s End Sessions singled out the guitar playing and the chords. It placed the record at the high point of the artist’s work as a guitarist and composer. At three minutes and thirteen seconds, Fly is one of the shorter songs on INNER VOICE. As a result, the ensemble never crowds the tune.
That choice runs against a famous precedent in folk recording. Nick Drake made Pink Moon at Sound Techniques in London over two late nights in October 1971. Only the engineer John Wood was in the room. Consequently, the album carries nothing but his voice, his acoustic guitar and one piano overdub. Fly takes the opposite route and opens a song written alone to a group of players. Even so, it still sounds like one person’s song, which is the real test of the session.
José González offers the closer comparison in spirit. The Swedish singer-songwriter from Gothenburg is a guitarist as much as a singer. He played the guitars, percussion and vocals on his debut, Veneer, himself. yieiori describes the same order of priorities in the artist bio, which lists guitarist before singer and songwriter.
From the AcousticMusic.News Curator Team: “What we noticed first is how calm the session sounds. A song that spent years on the road could easily have arrived overdressed for its first trip into a studio. Instead, the players leave the guitar and the voice room to breathe.”
yieiori Kept the Collaborations Going After Fly, and Here Is Where to Hear the Songs Now
The collaborations did not stop with Fly. Later releases credit German Maldonado on guitar and arrangement for our city, out in December 2024. Similarly, Gaston Puy plays guitar on 新方向, released in April 2025. For listeners who come to indie folk for songs about courage, Fly is the best introduction to yieiori.
Stream Fly in the Spotify player at the top of this page or on Apple Music. Then follow 叶枫 yieiori on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, X and the official site.
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