Songfacts®:

• The biggest Hall & Oates hit of the '90s, this song explores the vagaries of love: how we can be so close to the perfect union, but overcome with longing when it just isn't right.
• Daryl Hall wrote the original version of this song with George Green, who was the co-writer on some of John Mellencamp's hits, including "Hurts So Good" and "Rain On The Scarecrow." Hall & Oates recorded an acoustic version of the song that ended up being used as the B-side of the single (listed as "So Close (Unplugged)"), but their record company thought the song had more hit potential with full instrumentation, and called in Danny Kortchmar to produce it, who brought along some high-profile help: Jon Bon Jovi.
  
  Kortchmar, who played guitar on some of the biggest albums of the '70s (Jackson Browne's Running On Empty, Carole King's Tapestry), had moved into production work and recently finished co-producing Jon's Blaze of Glory album when he got the call to work on "So Close."
  
  "We were just having a ball in the studio," Kortchmar said of the Blaze of Glory sessions. "So when I got the call to produce this single, I said, 'Jonny, what do you say, let's do this.' So he said, 'Sure, man. Great. I love Hall & Oates. Let's keep going.'"
  
  Kortchmar and Bon Jovi burnished the song into a hit and made a few changes to its structure. Always an astute businessman, Jon asked for composer credits on the song for him and Kortchmar, which were granted. The hit version of the song is thus credited to Hall/Green/Kortchmar/Bon Jovi.