In 1981, she recorded a session with producer Jerry Wexler and a small jazz combo for a planned album titled Keeping Out of Mischief, but Ronstadt was dissatisfied with the results and cancelled its release.

[2] Although she would later revisit the concept (and most of the songs she'd attempted with Wexler) for a trilogy of albums with Nelson Riddle, Get Closer was recorded to satisfy her label obligations, with Ronstadt working again with producer Peter Asher and returning to the genres that had resulted in her commercial and critical success throughout the 1970s.

Also on Get Closer was a duet with James Taylor on a remake of Ike and Tina Turner's "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine"; and covers of two mid-1960s hits: The Knickerbockers' "Lies" and The Exciters' "Tell Him."

Ken Tucker of Rolling Stone magazine wrote in his November 11 review, "Linda Ronstadt's voice has never sounded better than it does on Get Closer...its spirit is unassailable."

'"[8] In The Boston Phoenix, Milo Miles found Ronstadt's album to be "an unusually casual, dry-eyed curtain call — it includes nods to her songwriting kith and kin as well as leftovers from her heyday and a few glassy late-period laments.

Ronstadt's seductive interpretation of Jimmy Webb's "Easy For You To Say" was a surprise Top Ten hit on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart in the spring of 1983.