Songfacts®:

• Hagar explained that this song is based on people who create wonderful plans and aspirations while under the influence of drugs, but then fail to follow through when they come down. He says it's based on personal experience.
• "High Hopes" is the title of a standard from the 1950s popularized by Frank Sinatra. That song is about reaching for your dreams and putting in the hard work to get there. Hagar uses the same title but shifts the meaning to be about hopes that happen while high.
• "High Hopes" is the leadoff song from Sammy Hagar's 1994 Unboxed album. The cover of the album shows Hagar in a boxing ring, a tribute to his father, a professional boxer who fought under the names Robert Hagar and Bobby Burns. Sammy was headed down that road until moving to Southern California at age 19. From then on, he played in numerous bar bands.
• Sammy Hagar was still the lead singer of Van Halen when he released this song. Along with "Buying My Way Into Heaven," it's one of two new songs on the Unboxed compilation, which is a greatest hits collection of his solo hits like "I Can't Drive 55" and "Three Lock Box."
  
  Around this time, fissures were forming in Van Halen. In 1996 Hagar left the group and was replaced with Gary Cherone.