> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.generationcountry.net/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How Exile’s “The Closer You Get” Traveled to Alabama - URL: https://www.generationcountry.net/behind-the-song-exile-the-closer-you-get/ - Published: 2026-10-23T16:37:22.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T16:37:22.000Z - Description: A drive-through billboard gave J.P. Pennington the title. He and Mark Gray gave Exile a song that traveled through Don King and Rita Coolidge before becoming an Alabama No. 1. - Author: Jared Ingersol - Tags: Behind the Song, Exile A billboard caught J.P. Pennington’s attention as he pulled into a fast-food drive-through. “The title came first,” Pennington tells Generation Country. “I saw those words on a billboard as I was pulling into a fast food drive-through. Then I thought ‘the further I fall’ might make a good following phrase.” Getting closer ordinarily suggests security. In “The Closer You Get,” intimacy has the opposite effect. The nearer the other person comes, the less control the narrator retains. The title and its answering phrase establish the song’s entire movement: attraction deepens, defenses weaken and falling becomes inevitable. Pennington carried the chorus into a writing session with his Exile bandmate Mark Gray. ## TWO WRITERS INSIDE THE BAND Pennington and Gray already knew they could write together. They had completed “Take Me Down,” another piece of polished pop craftsmanship that Exile recorded on its 1980 album *Don’t Leave Me This Way*. Alabama would eventually turn that song into a No. 1 country hit, but the connection between the two writers existed before anybody knew where their work would travel. “We felt like we had similar sensibilities, at least as far as what we thought worked for commercial radio music,” Pennington says. Gray was not an outside writer handing material to Exile. He had joined the band as a keyboard player and singer while the group was redistributing its vocal identity after Jimmy Stokley’s departure. The songs he and Pennington wrote came from inside the same group that would have to arrange, sing and perform them. The division of labor on “The Closer You Get” was straightforward. “I had the chorus written when we sat down,” Pennington says, “and Mark wrote a lot of the rest.” Neither man was trying to write a country song. Pennington later told writer Alanna Nash that “Take Me Down” and “The Closer You Get” had been written as pop songs. His recollection today is even less concerned with category. Exile heard “The Closer You Get” simply as a midtempo song, without writing or arranging toward a prescribed format. “All I recall about how the band worked it up was that we rehearsed the dickens out of it, just like we did every other new song,” Pennington says. “I sang the lead vocal and also participated in the backing vocals.” Exile placed the recording on the second side of *Don’t Leave Me This Way*. It was not separated from the album as a declaration of some future country identity. It was another Exile song, written, rehearsed and recorded by musicians who had already spent years moving among rock, soul and pop. Its next life began in the publishing office. ## TWO VERSIONS AT ONCE Pennington credits his Los Angeles publisher with recognizing how far the song might travel. The publisher had strong Nashville connections and put “The Closer You Get” into the hands of both Don King and Rita Coolidge. King recorded it for his 1981 Epic album *Whirlwind*, produced by Steve Gibson. A contemporary *Billboard* review called King’s performance a potent cover of an Exile song and believed the production could reach pop and adult-contemporary listeners as well as country radio. *Record World* heard rhythm guitar and steel in the arrangement. Country radio gave King the song’s first chart success. His single entered *Billboard*’s country chart in September 1981 and reached No. 27. Coolidge approached the same composition from another direction. Produced by Andrew Gold, her 4:28 recording appeared on *Heartbreak Radio* and was released as a single by A&M. When King’s version entered the country chart, *Billboard* noted that Coolidge also had a current recording of the song. For a brief period in 1981, two solo singers were carrying “The Closer You Get” toward different audiences. King’s record placed it squarely before country programmers. Coolidge’s version belonged to an album made for the pop and adult-contemporary world in which her voice was already familiar. The song did not have to change its identity to enter either room. Then Alabama entered the story for a second time. ## SEND IT TO ALABAMA Alabama recorded Pennington and Gray’s “Take Me Down” for *Mountain Music* and carried it to No. 1 on the country chart in July 1982\. Pennington saw an obvious next move. “I suggested he send it to Alabama, as Mark and I had had success with them on a prior album with ‘Take Me Down,’” Pennington says of his publisher. “It worked beyond our expectations!” Alabama and producer Harold Shedd gave “The Closer You Get” a forceful rock edge. Before the album appeared, *Cash Box* described synthesizer, an electronically altered snare and strategically placed rock guitar. When RCA released the single, the magazine praised the group’s thick harmonies, distorted guitar line and forceful backbeat. The production was unmistakably Alabama, but Pennington recognized something of Exile inside the singing. Hearing another artist record a song that he had written, rehearsed, recorded and played live required what he calls “an ear adjustment.” Of the later versions, he felt Alabama preserved more of Exile’s vocal approach, and he found that gratifying. Pennington remains partial to Exile's recording. His band had lived with the song through every stage, from the writing room to rehearsal, the studio and the road. Alabama’s version was released in the spring of 1983\. On July 16, it became the group’s tenth No. 1 country single. The album named after it returned to No. 1 that same week, marking its thirteenth week at the top of *Billboard*’s country-album chart. A phrase spotted while ordering food had become the title of one of country music’s biggest albums. ## THE SONG THAT WENT AHEAD The success carried two emotions for Pennington. “The realization of a life for the song beyond Exile hit me when I started getting paid for it,” he writes. The royalty statements offered tangible proof that the writing had connected. The circumstances around them were more complicated. Speaking with Nash in 1984, Pennington called the outside success “kinda bittersweet.” The songs were thriving while Exile was still working to rebuild its own recording career. That tension did not last forever. Less than eight months after Alabama took “The Closer You Get” to No. 1, Exile reached the top of the country chart with “Woke Up in Love.” Nine more Exile No. 1s followed through early 1988. Each recording brought the song to new listeners. Don King gave it a country Top 30 showing; Alabama's harmonies and rock-edged production carried it to No. 1 and supplied the title for a chart-topping album. The success of both “Take Me Down” and “The Closer You Get” also encouraged Exile's own move toward country. Before the royalties, the chart or the album named after it, Pennington had four words on a billboard and one line he wanted to put after them. --- *J.P. Pennington supplied his recollections in written responses to Generation Country. His quotations have been lightly copyedited only. Release, chart and contemporary critical details were checked against the original copyright registration;* Billboard *issues dated May 23, August 15 and September 19, 1981, and July 16, 1983;* Record World, *August 29, 1981;* Cash Box, *February 19 and May 7, 1983; Rita Coolidge’s A&M album credits; and Alanna Nash’s October 1984* Stereo Review *profile of Exile.*