A young woman in a white crop top — AI art by @paulie
@paulie · 3/12/2026
After the resounding success of his first solo album, the road to Eric Carmen's 2nd studio album proved to be a nightmare journey, littered with great songs in its wreckage that were never fully recognized. His "concept" led off with this song chroniclinge the powerful dynamic of that first desperate love would lead though the ups and downs of life and relationship struggle and culminate with the epic title track, Boats Against The Current! Part of the issue was a usually-genius level record executive who forced too many of his own ideas into someone else's story... and in the end forced a reshuffling of an album that told a wonderfully cohesive story into a mishmash of songs, with this as the end rather than beginning... Run Away - Eric Carmen - 1977 (From the album "Boats Against The Current") https://youtu.be/OuyfTGR1KfA?si=SDrhepZmSleGQgxM
Tags: autumn, fall, romance, vintage, goldenhour, nostalgic, romantic scene, couple, leaves, falling leaves, retro car, small-town, street photography, warm-toned, Americana
Comments
paulie
Thanks David. I was really not sure what I would get with this prompt. Pretty sure the prompt would not have made it through a certain other site. LOL. I KNOW the actual lyrics wouldn't because I tried once!
CaylaCatz
I love his lyrics. He's a wonderful poet, masterfully shooting out words. He's as fun to read as he is to listen to. It's too bad about what happened to his second album. I'm not sure what you meant by the end rather than the beginning. Didn't Clapton make a lot of solo albums? Or was the 2nd album supposed to be a concept album and became a collection of songs? (FYI, I'm not doing a song blog challenge this round. I'm doing a fairytale/folktale blog challenge if you want to join. Doesn't have to be traditional versions and can be based on a song about a tale as songs are your thing.)
DavidP
Do so enjoy the creative freedoms of BP 😀
DavidP
Gorgeous. Love the composition and colouring
CaylaCatz
oops sorry. lol. I can't believe that I made that slip up between Carmen and Clapton. I have no clue why I slipped like that. I liked several of his top songs. All by myself, hungry eyes, she did it. I think I must have had a senior moment. I think I had his best of album at one point but I don't think I listened to his other albums. It's too bad Davis changed his sequencing. Interestingly while critic Brian Kachejian on the Classic Rock History blog wrote Boats Against The Current was Carmen's greatest song as "It is one of the most heartbreaking breakup songs ever written. It’s genuine, sad, and an amazing work of art.", Carmen said it was inspired by the breakup with producer Jimmy Lenner. Just speculating here but I wonder if something in the song resonated so strongly with Clive Davis because it is a breakup with a producer song masked as a love song. It's so weird that Carmen died in Paradise Valley. That's over by Scottsdale. I didn't even realize he lived in Arizona.
paulie
Clapton too had a good number of solo albums, not sure his actual count. Eric *Carmen* had six total studio solo albums to go with his four as a member of *Raspberries* The beginning/end question dealt with the track list. EC had planned for a succession of songs, starting with Runaway and ending with Boats Against The Current, telling basically a year's long story of a failed romance. However Clive Davis, then head of Arista Records, fell in love with the title track, and forced Eric to make it the lead track. So in a feeble attempt to keep story cohesion, he reversed the tracking; moving his intended lead off track to the end, and so on, so that if you play the album in the reverse song order you can still hear the story as he intended it to be told.
paulie
Prompt captured that aspect nicely (Golden High School Dream)