Not used to being so uninvolved in her own work (owing partly to her own reported perfectionist tendencies), suffering from self-esteem issues due to her rapidly declining career, and enduring problems with substance abuse, Springfield abandoned the Longing album altogether late in the year.

When Springfield, after a time in her life often described as her 'wilderness years', returned to the music scene for the recording of the 1978 album It Begins Again with fellow Briton Roy Thomas Baker she re-recorded two further tracks originally included in the Longing set; the Motown classic "A Love Like Yours (Don't Come Knocking Everyday)" and Chi Coltrane's "Turn Me Around", both with slightly updated and different arrangements.

The year 2000 saw the debut of three original recordings from the Longing sessions; Janis Ian's "In the Winter", Melissa Manchester and Carole Bayer Sager's "Home to Myself" and Colin Blunstone and David Jones' "Exclusively for Me", all of which had been mixed and digitally remastered as early as 1995.

These three titles were finally released as part of Mercury/Universal Music UK's 4 CD boxed set Simply Dusty, a project which was commissioned with Springfield's full approval before her death in 1999.

In 2001 Universal Music's American sublabel Hip-O Records released the compilation Beautiful Soul: The ABC Dunhill Collection which besides the 1973 album Cameo also contained nine of the ten titles intended to be used on Longing, including the original versions of "I Am Your Child", "A Love Like Yours (Don't Come Knocking Every Day)" and "Turn Me Around".