I want every second of the minutes in the hours of these days
‘Cause there’s too many trees climb and secret spots to find down by the lake
The fireflies are out, momma’s calling now

We can’t go to sleep ‘cause we’ll wake up older
We can’t let these nights steal away half our lives

And we will spend our days finding helpless competition to defeat
Yeah, we’ll chase away the girls and pretend that we don’t want ‘em on our street
The sun is running too, being chased off by the moon
We should go bed, but we’ll catch fireflies instead

We can’t go to sleep ‘cause we’ll wake up older
We can’t let these nights steal away
I don’t want these days to ever be over
We can’t let these nights just steal away

So stay awake with me


Words by Matt Hammitt // Music by Chris Rohman, Mark Graalman, Dan Gartley, and Pete Prevost © 2008 Birdwing Music (admin. by EMI CMG Publishing) (ASCAP) / Olde Irish Publishing (admin. by EMI CMG Publishing) (BMI)

Behind the Song:
'This is a song about being a kid in the summer. As we wrote it, we recalled memories of staying out after dusk, catching fireflies, being nervous around girls, playing hide and seek, and so on. The biggest thing we all remembered though, was not wanting to go to bed. We wanted to stay up all night and play with our friends. Sleep was a waste of time. Life is very different now as adults, but in the stress of every day life, it's very calming to reflect on those days where our only worry was mama calling us home for sleep.' - Dan Gartley (Sanctus Real)