In April 2019, Goulding released another version of the song featuring Korean girl group Red Velvet to replace Swae Lee's verse in the song. She then later confirmed this would be the title, and along with posting an audio clip of the track, announced the release date and time. Goulding wiped her social media accounts and began promoting the track on 22 October 2018, first sharing a cartoon image of hers, Diplo and Swae Lee's arms locked in a triangle, displaying their tattoos against a cheetah print background, captioning it 'CLOSE TO ME'. The music video for 'Close to Me', directed by Diane Martel, was filmed in Budapest, Hungary, and premiered on 14 November 2018. The song follows a chord progression of EРІР‚вЂњC РІв„ўР‡m7РІР‚вЂњG РІв„ўР‡РІР‚вЂњA, and the vocals span from E 3 to C РІв„ўР‡ 5. The song is recorded in the key of E major with a tempo of 72 beats per minute in common time. Diplo suggested adding Swae Lee as a featured guest vocalist. Goulding, feeling that the song was 'missing something', eventually sent it to Diplo who sent his version back to her within a short amount of time. Goulding told Billboard that the song came about when she and co-writer Savan Kotecha were in a Los Angeles studio where they came up with the guitar melody and Goulding sang what would become the first line of the pre-chorus, 'don't let me down', which they decided to keep in the song.

Goulding on the inspiration behind the song. It was so nice to just go back to just writing a song about a turbulent, probably doomed relationship РІР‚вЂњ someone to forget the world with. Savan gets very overwhelmed with what's happening particularly in America, and I think we all wanted to forget that and just write something a bit silly. At the time, there was a lot going on in the world that I wanted to forget.

Close to me ellie goulding lyrics