Carpenter admits that songwriting “takes a long period of time for me. It’s never a short, easy process,” but this time, “I had a lot more songs than I can ever recall marching into the studio with, about 20 or 21.”  With Rollings’ help, she pared the lineup down to 13 tracks.  The title song, about the ineffable forces that propel us forward, was among the first to arrive: “For my ritual of writing, I tend to be sitting at my desk. I have a yellow legal pad and a pencil and a mini-disc player, and sometimes I just wait. This song—I don’t remember having the idea before I began to write, it’s one of those songs that just came about, I guess. By the time I got through the first stanza, I knew where I was going and what I wanted to say.”  Carpenter often notated the day she completed these songs; she finished “The Calling” on September 12, 2004.

Shortly before that, with the presidential election looming, Carpenter wrote “Why Shouldn’t We.”  Though very much a product of the moment, it resonates even more deeply now. (“We believe in things we’re told that we cannot change/Why shouldn’t we/We had heroes once, and we will again/Why shouldn’t we.”)  As Carpenter explains, “We were going out on tour and I was thinking about my set list.  I wanted to start the show every night with a feeling of optimism and hope. I was thinking I should find an existing song that speaks to me in that way. There was so much going on to divide people, and I wanted to counter that somehow. I ended up writing ‘Why Shouldn’t We’ and that sort of became my anthem.”