During a Valentines Day 2009 visit to Las Vegas, PWT's principal singer and song crafter Tom Higgenson was bowled over by a Cirque du Soleil show, O, and it made him wonder if it would be possible to capture the same anything-can-happen spirit on record. "The entire show has pirate ships, clowns and carousel horses coming up and going back into the pool, and at one point there's a piano that comes up out of the water, and it was really epic," he recalled. "I just loved it, and it gave me that feeling of being a kid and seeing Goonies for the first time, or Indiana Jones - so adventurous and imaginative and different. I left there wanting to make an album that gave people that same feeling."

Higgenson held onto that concept through the full year of writing for The Wonders of the Younger that followed. "There are songs like the title track and 'Welcome to Mystery' and 'Cirque Dans La Rue' that are a little bit more in your face with the idea of it," he said. "But even with songs like 'Boomerang' that are not necessarily all about being young or being a kid, I still had that theme in the back of my head."

Higgenson told Alternative Press magazine: "This is the most unique and exciting song on the album, and definitely one of my favorites. The whole concept for the album was inspired by the Cirque Du Soleil show O. This song is kind of my tribute to the guts, the creativity and the emotion that show delivered. For me, this is the climax of the album."

Cirque du Soleil (English: "Circus of the Sun"), is a Canadian entertainment company founded in the Quebec town of Baie-Saint-Paul in 1984 by two former street performers, Guy Laliberté and Daniel Gauthier. Each show is a synthesis of circus styles from around the world, with its own central theme and storyline, drawing the audience into the performance through continuous live music. Cirque has expanded rapidly worldwide since the beginning of 1990s. The multiple permanent Las Vegas shows alone play to more than 9,000 people a night, 5% of the city's visitors.