Songfacts®:

• In this sultry song, Matt Nathanson is filled with desire, really missing his girl when he's not with her, particularly the sex. It came from a place of passion, which might be why it has connected with listeners and endured as his most popular song. It's a very conflicted song, though. Nathanson's marriage was falling apart, which inspired the Some Mad Hope album. In "Come On Get Higher," the girl he's lusting after isn't his wife, and he's not sure whether to abstain or give in. At the end of the song you'll hear him shake out this dilemma in the line, "It's all wrong, it's so right."
  
  "It's a song about celebration and loss," he explained in a 2020 livestream. "Because I only feel joy when something is taken away. I feel the most when I'm denied something. It's trying to be as honest as I can in portraying this."
• The song is best understood in context with the album. It's track 2, following "Car Crash," where Nathanson is looking for some excitement so he can once again feel alive. That feeling continues into "Come On Get Higher," where he's not thinking so much about saving his marriage and is consumed with the other woman. That changes as the album goes on, and by the last track, "All We Are," he's contrite, ready to devote himself to his wife.
  
  "That record is a seminal moment in my life on many levels," he said in a Songfacts interview. "It's a heartbreaking time about a relationship and tells a story. Of all my records, it's the one that really benefits from being played as a whole. The songs segue into each other in a way that's really important."
• "Come On Get Higher" is Matt Nathanson's most popular song by a wide margin. The single is certified Triple Platinum for 3 million units, with 2 million of those coming after 2009, two years after the song was released. This shows that it is consistently not just streamed, but also downloaded, an indication that it has a very strong bond with listeners.
• Nathanson released his first album in 1993 and gradually built a fanbase that earned him a major-label record deal with Universal, which released his fifth album, Beneath These Fireworks, in 2003. He felt some pressure on that album to be on trend and get on MTV, which didn't happen - no hits emerged. So he switched to a midsize label called Vanguard and spent three years working on the Some Mad Hope album, released in 2007. It was an arduous process, but very authentic because he had no pressure to be anyone but himself. The songs were quite personal but written in a way that listeners could adapt them to their own lives. They caught on and took Nathanson to a new level; he could headline at theaters and open for bands like Train. "Come On Get Higher" was the only song from the album to make the Hot 100, but the other three singles, "Car Crash," "All We Are" and "Falling Apart," each made at least one Billboard chart.
• When Nathanson came up with the chorus, he knew he had something special, but it took a while to get it right. He recorded the song three different times before finally getting one he was happy with.
• The girl in the video is a model named Rosie O'Laskey. She dated Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio for a while.
• In September 2008, this song debuted at #89 on the Hot 100, making it the first chart entry for the Vanguard label since Alisha's "Baby Talk" in February 1986. It was also the first Hot 100 chart entry for Nathanson.
• Sugarland did a live version that they included on the deluxe edition of their 2008 Love on the Inside album. They later teamed with Nathanson on the song "Run," which appears on his 2011 album Modern Love.
• Nathanson co-wrote the songs on Some Mad Hope with his producer Mark Weinberg (Ari Hest, O.A.R.).