“I’m Working Really Hard To Try And Fill The Shoes Of Sam Fischer”: The Australian Singer Talks Living Up To And Expanding On His Gargantuan Viral Hit, “This City”

The Sydney-hailing artist has spent the past few years rebuilding. As he enters a new chapter with latest single, “A Heart Doesn’t Hurt Itself”, he talks “the heartbreak of hindsight”.

Amid industry pressures, burnout, and finding his way back to music after the pandemic stalled his breakout moment, Sam Fischer has travelled a long road back to himself in the past few years. The journey to get there, specifically to his new era – led by latest single “A Heart Doesn’t Hurt Itself” – has produced the most honest music he’s made yet. 

As he sits down with Man About Town, via Zoom, from Cairns, Australia, he’s currently supporting his fellow Australian pop breakout Guy Sebastian on his arena tour. “It’s been amazing,” he says with a smile. “We’ve done four shows so far, and I’ve been playing in front of more people than I ever have in my life. Guy is an absolute legend, and someone I grew up idolising.” The pair wrote a track together, a few years ago, titled “Antidote”. “We became friendly after that,” he says. “We were always talking about touring together, and he asked me a month ago. I didn’t know how I was gonna make it work, but I knew I had to do it.”

Not only did Fischer make it work, he brought his wife, Erin and best friend Nicholas Gentile along for the ride. “In the last couple of years, I haven’t been able to afford backing singers, but on this tour, my wife is doing it. She’s amazing. Her voice is my favourite in the world,” he explains. “My best mate from home in Sydney, Nick, is a singer, and I called him looking for backing-singer options, and he was like, ‘Uhm… take me!’ So we did, and it’s been great! It’s a real family affair.”

Across his career, Fischer has also collaborated with artists including Demi Lovato, Cian Ducrot and Anne-Marie. “I love working with other artists. I think it unlocks something in me that relieves any pressure or preciousness about the song that I’m working on, and sometimes we get gold, sometimes we get nothing.” 

Born in Sydney, Fischer grew up singing, playing violin and saxophone, and performing in jazz bands, orchestras and choirs. At 18, he moved to the United States and, in 2010, went on to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he was introduced to his wife via the college’s leading a cappella troupe, Pitch Slapped. “I was the year above her, and I auditioned her for the group. Basically, it was a power trip,” he jokes. “She walked in, and I thought to myself, ‘Wow, you’re really beautiful. Please be able to sing!’ And then she started singing, and I was like, ‘Oh, now I’m in trouble.’ And 13 years later, the rest is history.”

During this time, the a cappella scene was experiencing a major surge in global popularity, with groups such as Pentatonix achieving worldwide success after winning the TV talent show The Sing-Off and the Pitch Perfect franchise becoming a box office hit. Asked what it was like to be at the centre during that wave of global attention, Fischer says: “There’s an argument to be made that Pitch Perfect was based on Pitch Slapped. The competition that happens in the film is called the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA), and it’s a real fucking thing. The year the movie came out, my group won the ICCAs, and I got Best Soloist. Just sayin’!” He continues: “It was like this big wave, and it was fun to be part of the top group in America. I don’t want to say the top group in the world, because the so-called world championships featured something like 13 American groups and one English one. But it was really cool, and I still meet people to this day who tell me they were a fan of mine since the Pitch Slapped days, which is crazy. It definitely was a golden era.”

After college, Fischer moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a solo artist and songwriter. By 2019, frustration with his label and stalled progress left him disheartened and ready to step away, instead focusing on songwriting. But fate had other plans, and his breakthrough single “This City” became a worldwide, multi-platinum hit, surpassing a billion streams and securing him a tour with Lewis Capaldi. “This City is my best friend… It’s also my sugar daddy. It has paid my bills ever since it came out,” he says, reflecting on the milestone. “I love the track, and the fact that I have a song that people will know anywhere I go. There are millions of people trying to do this shit, and the fact that I can turn up anywhere in the world and play the song and have people singing it back to me is bonkers.”

Then came the pandemic, which Fischer admits became a major barrier in trying to capitalise on the song’s success. “When I wrote it, I was so disillusioned with the industry. I was working with people who didn’t care about my success at all. It nearly didn’t come out because, even though I thought it was great, the people around me didn’t really care. The timing could have been better, because it was out for a year and a half before it properly blew up. Then the pandemic hit not long after that, but I’m still eternally grateful for everything that song has given me.”

He adds: “I’ve had a couple of hits and nominations, so people sometimes find it odd that I’m playing 500-capacity shows at venues like the Oxford Art Factory in Sydney. It’s an amazing venue that I grew up going to, but people sometimes see that I’m doing that and go, ‘You’re way bigger than that, and the truth is, I’m not. Maybe my songs are, and maybe my name is, but people don’t know that that’s me. So I’m trying my best to play catch-up.”

His latest single, “A Heart Doesn’t Hurt Itself”, explores the complexities of this experience. After leaving Los Angeles, Fischer spent a year and a half in Virginia, a period he admits was incredibly challenging. He was left grappling with the fact that he hadn’t been able to capitalise on the success of “This City”, and says he started to blame himself for how his career had unfolded. Since then, he says he’s done “a lot of rebuilding.”

“Looking back at the situations that I dealt with, I was thinking I must be the problem and thinking all this negative shit. I’ve since come to realise that I didn’t do any of that to myself, and it’s even a little embarrassing to look back on how much I burdened myself with something that was completely out of my control,” he explains. “In hindsight, music played a really important part in my personal recovery. But at the time, I was really hating writing songs. I couldn’t write about anything other than what was going on. I was making myself sad and really attacking myself in my lyrics. When I was in Virginia, there was a good six months where I didn’t write a single song. That was probably the longest I’ve gone in about 16 years without writing anything.”

The new single is distinctly Fischer-esque, with layered vocal harmonies, stripped-back instrumentation and deeply confessional lyrics. Despite the mental turmoil that inspired it, the track reflects on this period in the singer’s life from a far more hopeful place. “It’s a song about the heartbreak of hindsight. After all of that, I now feel more empowered than ever to do what I want to do, and I’m working with amazing people who support that vision.”

He concludes, “I’m still hungry for it, and I want people to know that I’m not just the guy who sings “This City”, but also that I’m very honoured to be the guy who sings “This City”. I’m working really hard to try and fill the shoes of Sam Fischer!”

“A Heart Doesn’t Hurt Itself” is out now