Creed Songs - Higher Lyrics

Creed - Higher

Creed - Higher Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Human Clay
Released: 1999

Higher Lyrics

When dreaming I'm guided to another world
Time and time again
At sunrise I fight to stay asleep
'Cause I don't want to leave the comfort of this place
'Cause there's a hunger, a longing to escape
From the life I live when I'm awake
So let's go there
Let's make our escape
Come on, let's go there
Let's ask can we stay?

Can you take me Higher?
To the place where blind men see
Can you take me higher?
To the place with golden streets

Although I would like our world to change
It helps me to appreciate
Those nights and those dreams
But, my friend, I'd sacrifice all those nights
If I could make the Earth and my dreams the same
The only difference is
To let love replace all our hate
So let's go there
Let's make our escape
Come on, let's go there
Let's ask can we stay?

Can you take me higher?
To the place where blind men see
Can you take me higher?
To the place with golden streets

So let's go there
Let's make our escape
Come on, let's go there
Let's ask can we stay?

Up high I feel like I'm alive for the very first time
Set up high I'm strong enough to take these dreams
And make them mine

Set up high I'm strong enough to take these dreams
And make them mine

Can you take me higher?
To the place where blind men see
Can you take me higher?
To the place with golden streets

Can you take me higher?
To the place where blind men see
Can you take me higher?
To the place with golden streets

Writer/s: MARK TREMONTI, SCOTT STAPP
Publisher: RESERVOIR MEDIA MANAGEMENT INC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Higher

In our 2013 interview with Creed lead singer Scott Stapp , he explained how this song came together and what it means to him:

"I kind of say in the lyrics how it kind of came about.

I open it up:
'When dreaming, I'm guided to another world, time and time again.'

So I was basically commenting on my dream and writing my thoughts about what I was dreaming about. And it was on various levels. It was a literal dream, but it was also on my dreams as a human being at that stage in my life and where I was in my life at that time. I wanted the world, so to speak. I wanted to achieve every dream that I ever had. And also I had that idealistic view of wanting to create heaven on Earth. At the time I penned that song, my view of what heaven on Earth meant was very narrow, very naïve, and very wrapped up in ego and self-fulfillment. I didn't really expound on that, but I can comment on that now. And it's also, 'Be careful what you wish for, because your prayers might get answered.'"

A frequently misinterpreted song, in the September 2000 edition of Spin magazine, Scott Stapp explained that this is is not about Christ's ascension to heaven or taking a big bong hit, but is about the power of lucid-dreaming. "You're physically asleep, but you're awake in your mind," he explained.

He read a book about Hindu monks who have perfected the technique and thought it might help him squelch a recurring nightmare: He's running down a highway, closely pursued by a man with a gun. He turns left and hides behind a pillar beneath an overpass but gets shot anyway. Stapp says that once he learned how to lucid-dream, he was able to alter the nightmare so that he turned right and escaped. After he wrote "Higher" about the experience, he never had the nightmare again.

Like all of Creed's songs, the music to this track was written by the group's guitarist, Mark Tremonti . When Creed split up in 2004, the band members minus Stapp (Tremonti, bass player Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips), formed Alter Bridge.

Creed made a big impact with their 1997 debut album My Own Prison, which they initially released on an independent label before getting a major label deal with Wind-Up Records. Songs from the album, including "What's This Life For" and "Torn," got significant airplay on the rock radio (especially rock of the "modern" or "active" variety), and "What's This Life For" rose to #1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart.

"Higher" was the first single from their next album, Human Clay, and it did indeed take them higher - again to #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart, but this time for 17 weeks. It also made #7 on the Hot 100, marking a crossover for Creed to pop radio. The downside: the last single from My Own Prison, "One," was still getting airplay only a few months before "Higher" was issued. This deluge of Creed eventually wore out listeners, and the band suffered a backlash.

The video was directed by Ramaa Mosley, who also did the "What's This Life For" clip. In the video, Creed gets "higher" by taking the stage. Of note is the 360-degree shot of Scott Stapp at the end, which was a relatively new technique at the time, requiring an array of cameras and sophisticated software to interpolate the still images into what appears to be a continuous shot.

In our interview with Ramaa Mosley , she said that making the video was "a creative struggle." Said Mosley: "The band had only a short time before they had to go on tour in Japan and their schedule dictated that we had to shoot in Orlando, Florida. I wanted to be in Los Angeles where I had my team but it wasn't possible. So I flew out to location with my team and we started putting together this massive video. We had over 300 extras but really needed three times that amount.

I came up with the idea after listening to the song with the record label. They brought me into the room and played it for me. The first idea I had was this epic performance that later we question ever happened. I only pitched that idea."