diff --git a/.circleci/config.yml b/.circleci/config.yml
index 11e99c9543..1358cc6c87 100644
--- a/.circleci/config.yml
+++ b/.circleci/config.yml
@@ -1241,7 +1241,7 @@ jobs:
           command: make binary-releases/release.json
       - run:
           name: Making release notes
-          command: make -d binary-releases/RELEASE_NOTES.md binary-releases/fips/RELEASE_NOTES.md
+          command: make binary-releases/RELEASE_NOTES.md binary-releases/fips/RELEASE_NOTES.md
       - run:
           name: Validating artifacts
           command: ./release-scripts/validate-checksums.sh
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 13bf251169..37ba1b5597 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -89,11 +89,8 @@ $(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER)/sha256sums.txt.asc:
 $(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER)/release.json:
 	./release-scripts/release.json.sh
 
-# --commit-path is forwarded to `git log <path>`.
-#   We're using this to remove CLIv2 changes in v1's changelogs.
-#   :(exclude) syntax: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitglossary.html#Documentation/gitglossary.txt-exclude
-# Release notes uses version from package.json so we need to prepack beforehand.
-$(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER)/RELEASE_NOTES.md: $(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER) $(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER)/version
+# This target must not have any dependency to support checked in Release Notes that don't get overridden.
+$(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER)/RELEASE_NOTES.md:
 	npx conventional-changelog-cli -l -r 1 -n ./release-scripts/conventional-changelog-cli-config.js > $(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER)/RELEASE_NOTES.md
 
 $(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER)/fips/RELEASE_NOTES.md: $(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER)/RELEASE_NOTES.md $(BINARY_OUTPUT_FOLDER)/fips
diff --git a/release-scripts/prepare-release.sh b/release-scripts/prepare-release.sh
index e1487984d4..307cff0bc4 100755
--- a/release-scripts/prepare-release.sh
+++ b/release-scripts/prepare-release.sh
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ if [ -f binary-releases/RELEASE_NOTES.md ]; then
 fi
 
 # Generate the release notes baseline from the commits
-make binary-releases/RELEASE_NOTES.md format
+make binary-releases binary-releases/version binary-releases/RELEASE_NOTES.md format
 
 # if the release notes are generated locally, the version contains something like X.Y.Z-dev.hash
 # the replacement below ensures that the version in the RELEASE_NOTES.md is X.Y.Z