After "Smile" was scrapped, Wilson neglected to include the song on the replacement album "Smiley Smile" (1967). He said that his decision to keep "Surf's Up" unreleased was one that "nearly broke up" the band. In a review of "Smiley Smile" for "Cheetah", a critic bemoaned the album's absence of "Surf's Up", writing that the song is "better than anything that is on the album and would have provided the same emotional catharsis as that 'A Day in the Life' provides for "Sgt. Pepper"." During a 1970 interview, Wilson commented that the song was "too long to make it for me as a record, unless it were an album cut, which I guess it would have to be anyway. It's so far from a singles sound. It could never be a single."