Background and Development
"The Closer I Get to You" was written by Reggie Lucas and James Mtume, who were members of Roberta Flack's touring band and played on Blue Lights in the Basement. After forming a songwriting partnership, they left Miles Davis and attempted (unsuccessfully) to break into the record business, before finally joining Roberta Flack's band. They wrote the song between tours and, during the sessions for the album, brought it to Flack's producer Joe Ferla, who played it for Flack. Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, good friends while attending Howard University, recorded an album of duets in 1972. Five years later, the duo collaborated again on "The Closer I Get to You". "The Closer I Get To You" marks the second time Flack and Hathaway collaborated on a duet together, the first being "Where Is the Love", released in 1973.
"The Closer I Get to You" was not originally written as a duet. Flack's manager David Franklin, who had worked with Hathaway in the past, decided to re-write the song to include him. Hathaway had been suffering from severe bouts of depression at the time, which often forced him to be hospitalized. The depression also caused mood swings, which adversely affected his partnership with Flack. After Flack and Hathaway were reconciled, the producers had to get permission from the hospital to fly Hathaway out for the recording sessions. Following Hathaway's death in 1979, Flack revealed the importance of recording the song in an interview with Jet, stating:
I tried to reach out to Donny. That's how we managed to do the song we did last year. I felt this need because I didn't know what to do. I couldn't save him, I knew he was sick. But I knew when he sat down at that piano and sang for me it was like it was eight or nine years ago because he sang and played his ass off.
Flack announced that "The Closer I Get to You" would forever be a dedication to Hathaway, and that all money made from the song would be donated to Hathaway's wife and two kids, stating "All of that money is going to his family. Any portion that would have been mine is going to go to his wife and two kids." According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Scarab Publishing Corporation, "The Closer I Get to You" moves at a slow tempo of 90 beats per minute, and it is written in the key of A Major. Flack sings in a vocal range of C#4-F#5. "The Closer I Get to You" features piano, guitar and male and female vocals.
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