Songfacts®:

• This jaunty song is not what you would expect from Jon Anderson, who is best known for progressive rock as frontman of the band Yes, but it certainly syncs with his optimistic outlook. What does make him happy? It's not the money, fame or accolades, but peace and love. "The idea is to reference 'make love, not war,' he told Songfacts. "That came from John Lennon."
• This song dates to 1990, when Anderson, who left Yes two years earlier, started working on it as part of a solo album. He went back to Yes that year and the album was shelved, but in 2019 the producer Michael T. Franklin convinced him to revive it. With Franklin's help, Anderson got some A-list musicians to fill in the blanks and embellish it. On "Makes Me Happy," Rick Derringer added guitar and Tower Of Power contributed horns. The album finally appeared in 2020.
• The beatboxing on this song came courtesy of Michael Winslow, the human sound machine known for his appearances in the Police Academy movies. Anderson often records vocalizations that he layers into his vocal tracks; when Winslow heard these, he build off of them by adding his own.