[4] After touring in support of their previous album, Grace Under Pressure (1984), the band took a break and reconvened in early 1985 to begin work on a follow-up.

The material continued to display the band's exploration of synthesizer-oriented music, this time with the addition of sampling, electronic drums, a string section, and choir, with power being a running lyrical theme.

In January 1986, the album reached platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for one million copies sold in the United States.

Guitarist Alex Lifeson looked back at this period, and noted their conscious effort in taking the strongest elements of their previous two records, Signals (1982) and Grace Under Pressure and capitalizing on them for Power Windows.

Having worked out some material, Rush underwent a five-day warm-up tour in Florida in March 1985 to sharpen their performance and to test the new songs on stage prior to recording.

[6] On their first day back at Elora, Peart began work on lyrics for "Emotion Detector" as the group had discussed the possibility of recording a ballad for their new album.

[6] This was followed by Rush arranging the music for "Emotion Detector" and "Territories", after which they had assembled a demo tape of seven new songs ready to present to Collins for recording.

[5] During their warm-up gigs in Florida, the band first met Australian engineer James "Jimbo" Barton, whom Collins had recommended.

They accepted, and Peart later praised Barton's contributions and suggestions to the band, considering his small recommendations to improve a song, which he referred to as "events", was "just what we were looking for".

[6] Lifeson compared the experience of recording Power Windows as more pleasant and fun than Grace Under Pressure, which presented various problems for the band.

[5] Lee supported this view and said the group decided "not to hold anything back" and make the album first and focus later on the music's onstage presentation.

[6] Mixing began in July after the band took a one-week break from the material, which coincided with decisions on the final running order, artwork, credits, and photos.

The track was difficult for the band to put together, partly due to Peart's difficulty in writing lyrics from an objective point of view, rather than as an observer of the event.

After Peart had written some lyrical ideas he went through them with Lee, who noticed it was telling a story and found them difficult to sing once he and Lifeson had developed music for them.

[9] Lifeson considered the song to be close to Peart as he had taken up cycling during days off on the Grace Under Pressure tour, riding 100 miles each time.

[9] The pictures on the front and back covers were painted by Hugh Syme, from reference photos taken by photographer Dimo Safari, and the model is Neill Cunningham from Toronto.

[20] Rolling Stone magazine, in a positive review of the album, highlighted a number of bands that seemingly influenced Power Windows, such as The Police, U2, Genesis, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

During the period when the album was produced, the band were expanding into new directions from their progressive rock base,[23] having "tightened up their sidelong suites and rhythmic abstractions into balled-up song fists, art-pop blasts of angular, slashing guitar, spatial keyboards and hyperpercussion, all resolved with forthright melodic sense".

[27] All lyrics are written by Neil Peart; all music is composed by Alex Lifeson and Geddy LeeRush Additional personnel Production