A Nightmare to Remember

"A Nightmare to Remember" is the opening track on Dream Theater's 10th studio album, Black Clouds & Silver Linings. It's 16-minutes long, which explains the "progressive" in Dream Theater's "progressive metal" label. The album contains just six songs, and it covers some pretty heavy stuff. Their drummer Mike Portnoy told Songfacts: "Because there was only six songs, because the lengths were very long, it meant that there were only going to be six subject matters. Normally if we have more songs on the album, we're able to cover more lyrical ground. But with only six songs, inevitably the topics are heavy."

Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci wrote the lyrics for this song about a near-death car accident that he was involved in as a child. Portnoy told us that it's a true story, "Something that happened to John when he was a kid."