After plugging in the available guitar, Kravitz started playing the song, stating, "I was listening to the way different chords were ringing, just moving between A, C, G and D, and the next thing I knew I was telling the engineer to hook up the mics and record.

"[4] By the time he wrote "Fly Away", Kravitz had already turned in the completed album to Virgin Records, and he considered releasing the song as a b-side.

In the United Kingdom, "Fly Away" debuted at the top of the UK Singles Chart, becoming Kravitz's first chart-topping song in Britain.

[14][15][16][17] The song helped to expand the success of his fifth studio album, 5, in Europe and earned Kravitz a Grammy Award in 1999 for Best Male Rock Performance, his first of four consecutive wins in this category.

Kravitz also appears in a 2010 video in which he joined the Voice of Praise Choir from the First Baptist Church of Lewisville, Texas, as they performed "Fly Away" on a street in New Orleans.

Internet personality Neil Cicierega made a lyric video of the song with the vocal tracks heavily altered,[60] which received coverage from several websites.