Higher

In a 2013 Songfacts 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.