Closer to the Heart

Lee and Lifeson wrote the music. The words are by Peart and Peter Talbot, a musician friend of Peart's and the first person outside the band to co-write a Rush song. Peart adapted Talbot's poems. Lee called the result as close as the band ever came to a pop song. Peart said the lyrics offer solutions to the concerns raised in the album's title track. The band recorded it at Rockfield Studios on 23 June 1977 with Terry Brown, and the studio version runs 2:53.

It came out as a single in the United States in October 1977 and in Britain on 27 January 1978. It reached number 36 in Britain in February 1978, Rush's first hit there. A live version from Exit...Stage Left was released as a single in 1981 and reached number 69 on the American Hot 100. The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted the song in 2010.

Live

Rush played it on nearly every tour from 1977. They dropped it for most of the 2002 Vapor Trails tour and all of the 2004 R30 tour, and left it out in 2007 and 2008. It came back on the 2010 Time Machine tour. Peart said the band had grown sick of it. From June 1984 to May 1994 he played it on an electronic Simmons kit. It was still in the set on the R40 tour.

It was also played at a 2005 CBC telethon with Mike Smith as Bubbles and Ed Robertson, and at the 2022 South Park 25th anniversary concert with members of Primus and Matt Stone.

The upload in the hypersongs web is the official music video on the band's VEVO channel.