Composition
"Fly Like a Bird" is a mid-tempo ballad, drawing influence from Gospel, soul and R&B music genres. It incorporates music from several musical instruments, including the organ, bass drum and trumpet. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by EMI Music Publishing, the song is set in common time with a moderate tempo of 54 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of B minor with Carey's vocal range spanning from the low-note of F♯3 to the high-note of A6. The song's chorus has a chord progression of F♯m7-Bm-G/A-Bmaj7 in the verses, while changing into Gmaj7 during the bridge. Lyrically, "Fly Like a Bird" boasts a prayer in which the protagonist asks God for help during difficult times, and to carry them "higher and higher". Cintra Wilson from LA Weekly described the song's lyrics in depth, as well as where she felt the yearning lyrics stemmed from:
'Fly Like A Bird', is a kitchen-sink, hyper-produced gospel number, but is really quite moving. There is a real, human yearning for mercy in it — Mariah’s true cry for help from a place of near-suicidal despair: 'Sometimes this life can be so cold /(Lord) I pray you'll come and carry me home'. But there’s a lot of hope and faith in this wounded voice: Carey keeps, with touching conviction, a firm grip on the idea that some higher, divine intelligence out there loves her, even if nobody else does; even if she is lost to herself. It comes across emotionally, because her heart is fully in it — Mimi has been beaten, humiliated, heartbroken; joys have been slapped out of her hands quicker than she could appreciate them. She’s deeply confused, and God, she really needs help. Hell: We’ve all been there.
Entertainment Weekly's Tom Sinclair described the song as a "veritable prayer that explicitly references God", and highlighted the lines "Sometimes this life can be so cold / I pray you'll come and carry me home, Carry me higher, higher, higher." According to Carey, the song holds deep lyrical meaning for herself, as well as her fans. She compared it to older emotional ballads from her career, and described the sentiment they held for many fans "Usually, I'll have an introspective bleak-outlook-on-life song. In the past it's been 'Petals' or 'Close My Eyes'. Those were the ones that the hard-core fans related to most. But this has a hopefulness to it. That's why it's one of my favorites, too." Additionally, Carey outed Keaton's verse during the song's introduction as her favorite part of the song, and included it as a guide for fans, due to the help it had given her in the past:
'To me the most important thing is the message he says in the beginning of the song,' she notes. 'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.' I felt like a lot of people may not hear that message and a lot of people need to. It wasn't to be preachy. A lot of times people will hear songs that I write that are not the typical songs people look at as 'Mariah Carey songs.'
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