| Make It Happen/The Tears of a Clown | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | Smokey Robinson & the Miracles |
| Cover: | Miracles-make-it-happen.jpg |
| Released: | August 29, 1967 |
| Recorded: | 1966–1967 |
| Studio: | Hitsville USA, Detroit and in Los Angeles |
| Genre: | Soul, R&B |
| Length: | 33:13 |
| Label: | Tamla TS-276 |
| Producer: | Smokey Robinson, Henry Cosby, Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier |
| Prev Title: | Away We a Go-Go |
| Prev Year: | 1966 |
| Next Title: | Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 |
| Next Year: | 1968 |
Make It Happen is a 1967 album by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. It featured ballads such as the hit singles "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage" and "More Love", as well as the up-tempo "The Tears of a Clown" co-written by Stevie Wonder and his producer Hank Cosby.
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]