Three years after the album's release, "The Tears of a Clown" was issued as a single, and charted at #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart. As a result, Make It Happen was reissued as The Tears of a Clown in 1970.
Stevie Wonder was a contributing writer on three of the album's songs, the aforementioned "The Tears of a Clown", "After You Put Back the Pieces (I'll Still Have a Broken Heart)", and "My Love Is Your Love (Forever)". Holland-Dozier-Holland contributed the good-times dance song "It's a Good Feeling". Smokey's fellow Miracles Warren "Pete" Moore and Marv Tarplin collaborated with him on the songs "You Must Be Love" (a popular regional hit tune), and "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage" (a Top 20 Hit) respectively, and all of The Miracles (except Claudette) co-wrote the up-tempo rocker "Dancing's Alright". The album also features a rendition of Little Anthony & The Imperials' 1964 Top 20 smash, "I'm on the Outside (Looking In)" "The Tears of a Clown" on the monaural version of the album has an alternate lead vocal.
Critics at Allmusic praised the album, giving it 4-1/2 out of five stars, calling it "The most underrated Miracles LP of the '60s", and stating that, in addition to the album's three hits, it also had "featured a spate of [other] great songs, including three or four that really should've been hits".[1]