Al Green Gets Next to You

The album followed Green Is Blues (1969), the first record Mitchell produced for him. It opens with a slow, blues-oriented reworking of the Temptations' I Can't Get Next to You. Pitchfork wrote that Green swooped in and stole the song although the Temptations had taken it to number one the year before, and that the 1970 single saved him from one-hit-wonder status. The Guardian called the cover audacious and said it gave him a minor hit.

The ten songs also include Tired of Being Alone, which Green wrote, and a version of the Doors' Light My Fire. I'm a Ram, written by Green with Teenie Hodges, struck the Guardian as funkier and more experimental than most of his work, with a rhythm guitar riff that anticipates the clavinet sound of Stevie Wonder's Superstition. Batey wrote that it was Tired of Being Alone, not the cover, that defined his signature sound. Releases outside North America added four tracks from Green Is Blues, which had not been issued there.