Songfacts®:

• Jared Higgins is an emo-leaning Chicago rapper whose performing name Juice WRLD was inspired by the 1992 2Pac film Juice. Higgins began to develop himself as an artist in his freshman year of high school, but really started to pop up on the nationwide hip-hop radar with this track.
• Lucid dreaming is a state of consciousness in which a person is awake enough to be aware that they are dreaming. They happen most frequently when somebody drifts off for half an hour during the day time. The dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over the dream narrative. During this song, Higgins links the concept to sleep paralysis, a psychological phenomenon where a brain is active and awake but the person's body is still asleep, meaning the sleeper is aware but unable to move or speak.
  
  I have these lucid dreams where I can't move a thing
  Thinking of you in my bed.
  
  Higgins uses the analogy of lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis to describe his heartbreak following a break-up. The rapper keeps seeing his ex-lover in his dreams, which leaves him in such mental anguish, he is left feeling paralyzed.
• The song was produced by Nick Mira, who also supplied the beat for Juice WRLD's "All Girls Are the Same." His instrumentation samples the guitar intro of Sting's "Shape Of My Heart", a 1993 track from The Police frontman which was previously sampled by Nas on "The Message" in 1996.
  
  "My producer sung me the beat, and then when I heard it, I was like, 'Oh, wow, that's a Sting sample,' Juice WRLD recalled to Billboard. "I think it was like eight bars of the song. That was like the beat that carried the whole beat, the melodies, all of it. It all revolved around the sample."
• Juice GRLD garnered his first entries on a Billboard chart when on the Hot 100 dated May 28, 2018, "All Girls Are The Same" debuted at #92 and "Lucid Dreams" at #74.
• Other artists that have recorded songs about lucid dreams include Franz Ferdinand and Soja.
• Asked by Billboard what led him to sample "Shape of My Heart," Juice pointed to the power of mixing genres, which he defined as "taking two things that you wouldn't think would go together and showing people that they could be perfectly put together."
• Sleep paralysis is something that Juice knows a lot about, having experienced it for much of his life. He told Genius: "If somethings bothering me, I have it, if I'm going through stress and s--t, I have it. It's still the same feeling as it was when it first started, still the same amount of fear, it does not get old. It's scary, you can be laying right next to somebody and if they not paying attention, they won't even know you having it."
• Asked about the song's takeaway message, Juice replied: "I want people to know is, just be aware of your feelings. Really, just be aware of your feelings, and I think that's pretty much what it did for people, in a way."
• Juice WRLD wasn't the first artist to successfully borrow from "Shape Of My Heart." Back in 2003 both the Sugababes and Craig David had hit singles in the UK with songs that sampled Sting's track.
• So what does Sting think about Juice utilizing his song for a rap track? Turns out, he's a fan - the Police frontman told Billboard it's a "beautiful interpretation that is faithful to the original song's form."
  
  "Shape Of My Heart" co-writer and Sting's longtime guitarist Dominic Miller also gives Juice's interpretation the thumbs up. "I thought it was the most intelligent version of that riff that I've ever heard," he says. "I was really happy with it. I love what he's saying. He talking about something everyone can relate to, which is a breakup. It's done in a very beautiful way. We're really happy for his success and, of course, for us too."
• Speaking to NME in a 2019 interview, Juice admitted that he's tired of this track and hates it "with a P-A-S-S-ion," but still performs it out of duty to his fans.
• Pop-punk band Yellowcard filed a complaint on October 21, 2019, in US District Court in California claiming "Lucid Dreams" ripped off parts of their 2006 track "Holly Wood Died."
  
  Former members of Yellowcard - the group disbanded in 2017 - alleged that Juice WRLD and his co-writers plagiarized melodic elements from their song "without license or consent." The band also provided a chart that analyzed both tracks, noting similar elements like hook and vocal melodies.
  
  Yellowcard asked for damages in excess of $15 million and a "running royalty and/or ownership share" on all future exploitations related to "Lucid Dreams."
  
  Yellowcard announced on July 28, 2020 their withdrawal of their copyright infringement lawsuit. The band's lawyer explained they "really were uncomfortable about pursuing this action against Juice WRLD's grieving mother as the representative of his Estate."
  
  However, the lawyer also stressed that the dismissal was without prejudice, meaning the action could be re-filed in the future.