Queensrÿche followed its progressive metal classic Operation: Mindcrime with the widescreen power ballad "Silent Lucidity," to the best of KORD's knowledge the first and so far only Top Ten pop hit about lucid dreaming - i.e., achieving conscious awareness of dreaming while still asleep.
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Queensrÿche formed in Bellevue, Wash., uniting the members of up-and-coming metal outfit the Mob (guitarists Chris DeGarmo and Michael Wilton, bassist Eddie Jackson and drummer Scott Rockenfield) with frontman Geoff Tate, recruited from a rival act, Babylon, to sing lead on the Mob's four-song demo, recorded in 1982 at Triad Studios in nearby Redmond. When the demo received a glowing review from Kerrang! magazine, managers Kim and Diana Harris officially released the material via their own 206 Records label, and in the wake of widespread critical approval, Queensrÿche (a name adapted from the tape's leadoff track, "Queen of the Reich," and modified to eliminate any connection to Nazism) signed to EMI, which re-released the EP in August 1983. Queensrÿche's full-length debut The Warning - written during the group's tours in support of Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister, and inspired by George Orwell's dystopian fiction landmark Nineteen Eighty-Four - was only a minor success at home in the U.S., but yielded the international hit "Take Hold of the Flame."
Metal critics continued to champion Queensrÿche, and with its third album, the 1988 rock opera Operation: Mindcrime, the group entered the mainstream, reaching number 50 on the Billboard 200 thanks to the singles "Eyes of a Stranger" and "I Don't Believe in Love." Operation: Mindcrime tells the story of Nikki, a young drug addict who wakes up in a mental hospital, vaguely aware he once served as a hired assassin enmeshed in a conspiracy to overthrow the government.
"I finished the whole story outline, started working on the music and writing some songs for the album I was doing in my head, and by springtime, Michael [Wilton] was getting married, so I flew home to be in the wedding," Tate recalled in 2018. "At the bachelor party, I sprung this idea to the rest of the band about Operation: Mindcrime as a story, a concept, saying ‘These are the characters and here's some of the music I've written already, and what do you think?' They all loved the idea, so after Michael's honeymoon, we all began earnestly adding to the record and working on it, and by the end of the year, we had it finished and were getting ready to release it. It was one of those kinds of projects that started snowballing. It started rolling and rolling and rolling, and pretty soon, it was bigger than all of us."
DeGarmo composed "Silent Lucidity" for Empire, 1990's triple-platinum follow-up to Operation: Mindcrime. The song was inspired by the 1974 book Creative Dreaming: Plan and Control Your Dreams to Develop Creativity, Overcome Fears, Solve Problems, and Create a Better Self, written by Patricia Garfield, Ph.D, one of six co-founders of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, an international nonprofit dedicated to the pure and applied investigation of dreams and dreaming. "Dreams tend to recur. Very often you have the same images, and it's being used in therapy, to confront the image in your dream," DeGarmo told Metal Edge in 1990. "In a lifetime, the average person spends about four and a half years in a vivid hallucination of the subconscious. You're doing things like flying, walking through walls –– it's so intense. People can experience incredible physical sensations during dreaming."
"Silent Lucidity" was originally intended to feature only Tate's vocals and DeGarmo's 12-string guitar, but arranger and conductor Michael Kamen was brought in during the waning days of the Empire sessions to add its grandiose orchestral embellishments. "We created a very real dreamlike landscape for [‘Silent Lucidity']," DeGarmo said. "Everything from the vocal delivery to the orchestration, to the melody, the instruments, it's all trying to create this very lush landscape. It's a huge-sounding track."
EMI released "Silent Lucidity" in February 1991, accompanied by a video that soon became omnipresent on MTV. The single peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the trade rag's Album Rock Tracks chart. "Silent Lucidity" was also nominated for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group at the 1992 Grammy Awards, and most notable of all, it was skewered by Ween via "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)," the penultimate track on the duo's major label debut Pure Guava.
"People have been married to that song, children have been born to that song, people have been buried to that song, and children have been made to that song," Tate told SiriusXM's Trunk Nation in 2017. "It's really had quite an impact on the population, you know." 
