A few months back I wrote about using Flickr as a source of visual inspiration for songwriting. At the time, I was working with a line “She’s like a merry-go-round” and had some vague ideas about how the song might develop.  I continued with that initial theme of amusement park as a place to experience young love.

The final result is called “Carry On”.  I wrote about the title and the bridge to this song in another earlier post.  The original version was written for acoustic guitar with a much slower tempo in mind.  When working on the demo, I brought the tempo up to 124 bpm and added a more complex arrangement, including some vintage analog synth parts that seemed to complement the mood of the song.  Trumpeting the love, as it were.

The image is from a colour linocut by Cyril E. Power, called “The Merry-Go-Round” and posted on Flickr Creative Commons.