Songfacts®:

• Blue Man Group, three colorful percussionists with a wildly entertaining stage show, launched their first tour, The Complex, in 2003. They had released an album before (Audio in 1999), but for the soundtrack to The Complex, they introduced guest vocalists, including Dave Matthews and Gavin Rossdale. Tracy Bonham, known for her hit "Mother Mother," is the singer on "Up To The Roof," a song that takes her up the fire escape to the roof, where she will find the truth (most Blue Man Group music is at least a little mind-bending).
• The Blue Man Group released a "song bio" explaining: "This song depicts a woman who's fed up in general with societal pressure. In our mind, she might also represent an artist who's frustrated with the vapid and demeaning nature of what Joni Mitchell called the 'star-maker machinery.' The woman says, 'Tried to go the way you told me, but each time I got lost. The stairs didn't lead me anywhere.'
  
  So now she's ready to find her own route, one that can get her to a place where something meaningful and authentic can be expressed. She's going to take the fire escape up to the roof. This is a writing tool that we invented. We call it a 'metaphor.' Pretty soon, everyone will be doing this, but that's OK, we're used to getting ripped off."
• This song was written by Blue Man Group founders Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton, and Chris Wink, along with their creatives Chris Dyas, Larry Heinemann, Phil Stanton and Todd Perlmutter.
• Tracy Bonham performed this song on The Complex tour with Blue Man Group, where she also did a short set before the show. She had been dropped by her label, and earnings from the tour helped finance her next album, Something Beautiful.
• In a 2022 Songfacts interview with Tracy Bonham, she explained how she ended up singing on this track. "They wrote it and they were auditioning singers to come down to their studio on East 3rd in New York City," she said. "I don't think I was the first one to sing it. When I went in to sing and to audition, the track was already built. There were tubulums - their PVC pipes - and distorted guitars and their big drums. All I did was go in and sing it, and they were like, 'You got the gig.' I went on their album and was their guest singer, and then they invited me to tour with them."