[1][2] Two versions of the album's sleeve design exist; its North American release features each member photographed during a performance on the BBC music television show The Old Grey Whistle Test with a black background.

[5] "Love Remembered" is a track written by Akkerman, playing an acoustic guitar with van Leer's flute, which is based on a young couple's morning walk.

He was not fond of a composition that singer Sylvia Alberts was given to sing for her solo performance,[5] so he wrote the instrumental with a set of lyrics in English written by Linda van Dyck.

Its original title was a long one: "I Thought I Could Do Everything on My Own, I Was Always Stripping the Town Alone", and concerned an independent young woman who fell apart after she met the love of her life.

[8] Akkerman wrote "Elspeth of Nottingham" after driving around England for a holiday in 1967, stopping in a town in the Cotswolds where he first heard guitarist Julian Bream play the lute which inspired him to learn the instrument.

[8][9] "Carnival Fugue" borrows from Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier before venturing into cool jazz territory, then culminates in a rock finale with piccolo improvisations and a hint of Calypso rhythms on guitar.

The two former members who perform on the recording, bassist Martin Dresden and drummer Hans Cleuver, are not credited on the album sleeve.

[15] In November 1973, Billboard announced the album was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling in excess of 500,000 copies.

[10] In his retrospective review for AllMusic, Ben Davies rates the album four-and-a-half stars out of five, highlighting the band's "jollier, more accessible tone" compared to their more serious sound on Moving Waves.

He concludes with: "To be frank, this LP has it all: diverse songs, astounding musicianship, one of the finest singles ever released — Focus III should unquestionably be ranked alongside the likes of ... rock's greatest".

[17] Down Beat rated Focus 3 five stars out of five in 1972, citing it to be "a sincere, emotional mixture of classical, jazz, and rock."