Close To You

Jack Daugherty produced, Richard Carpenter arranged and orchestrated, and Ray Gerhardt and Dick Bogert engineered. Richard recalled that Ticket to Ride, the single from Offering, peaked at number 54 and did not move many albums, but that Herb Alpert kept the faith, and they began a second album with Love Is Surrender and I'll Never Fall in Love Again, recorded before the title song came to their attention. In late 1969 Burt Bacharach heard Ticket to Ride and asked them to open a benefit show with a medley of his songs. Alpert gave Richard an obscure Bacharach and David song. Richard felt it did not fit the medley, but Alpert felt strongly that it belonged on the new album.

Besides the two hits, Richard singled out Help, which was slated as the second single until the title song arrived, and four songs he and Bettis wrote while still in college: Crescent Noon, Mr. Guder, Maybe It's You and Another Song. Mr. Guder was written in late 1967 after the pair were dismissed from Disneyland by their supervisor, Vic Guder. Reason to Believe and Baby It's You were two more he rated.

Billboard said their smooth blend of voices was evident throughout and that the album should skyrocket up the charts, and Cash Box found much of it fine material penned by Richard. Rob Hoerburger of The New York Times, writing in 2014 that Close To You was the first Carpenters album he ever owned, called one of his favorite tracks from it a showcase for "both Karen's aching alto and Richard's deft piano playing and elegant Satie-like arrangement." The album topped the Canadian chart and reached number 2 on the US Billboard albums chart, and it spent 76 weeks in the top 50 of the British chart during the first half of the 1970s. It was nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys, and Rolling Stone ranked it number 175 in its 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums.