One of the most prominent songs of the post-grunge movement.

The American rock band was easily one of the most successful rock bands of the late 1990s and early 2000s. With their best-known lineup consisting of lead vocalist Scott Stapp, guitarist and vocalist Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall, and drummer Scott Phillips, they managed to release three consecutive multi-platinum albums, one of which has been certified diamond.

One of the popular songs by the band is the song “Higher” which was released in August 1999 as the lead single from their second studio album, Human Clay. Vocalist Scott Stapp and long-time friend Steven Harang wrote the song about the power of lucid dreaming.

In the September 2000 edition of Spin magazine, Scott explained that, “You’re physically asleep, but you’re awake in your mind”. 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. Now isn’t that just a wonderful backstory?

Check out one of their live performances of the song in Alcatraz below!