So why is The Byrds’ Turn! Turn! Turn! on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
I recently covered The Byrds’ Mr. Tambourine Man (#332) on this here best 1,000 albums ever projects, and noted how comfortable The Byrds were – as were everyone else, seemingly – with not only covering a recent Bob Dylan song, but flat-out naming their entire album after it:
Turn! Turn! Turn!, released in the same year of 1965, also covers Dylan, this time with “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” which also happens to be yet another Dylan classic and, in this case, is the title of Dylan’s album from 1964.
And it’s uncanny how good The Byrds are at covering Dylan while making the material their own. In this case, they take Dylan in iconic folk singer-songwriter mode and transform it about two solid notches toward groovy and swinging. What’s remarkable, the more I listen to both versions, is how perfectly The Byrds calibrate theirs – just groovy and swinging enough to make it unmistakably their own.
“It Won’t Be Wrong” is a huge reason why Turn! Turn! Turn! is this high, rankings-wise, on the 1,000 albums project. It’s an absolute gem of folk music fused with Southern California-flavored mid-1960s rock. And its harmonies are among the best The Byrds ever produced.
“Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season),” which is sort of the title track, is arguably The Byrds’ most famous song of all.
It occurs to me that this is also the first Byrds song that I ever heard, which was by way of it being introduced in a music class at some point during my upbringing. The music class wasn’t religious in nature, if you’re wondering, as the song’s lyrics “are taken almost verbatim from the book of Ecclesiastes.”
And I’d wager that “Turn! Turn! Turn!” the song gained a new boost in popularity from being featured in Forrest Gump in 1994, though it’s also been featured in plenty of other movies* and TV shows, and is generally considered to be a Vietnam War-era standard.
* “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)” was also featured in “Homer, one of the first coming-of-age films about a Vietnam war soldier.”
It’s a gorgeous song, of course, and its biblical lyrics in addition to its presence in various forms of pop culture have probably caused it to feel capital C “Classic” to me when it comes to Classic Rock.
Finally, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” a song title that I imagine is based on the iconic science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, is a tremendous instrumental tune that reminds you that in addition to being incredible songwriters and vocalists, The Byrds are a band made up of world-class musicians.
Some stats & info about The Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn!
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Bands, SoCal Bands, Folk Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Turn! Turn! Turn! released? 1965
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #321 out of 1,000
The Byrds’ Turn! Turn! Turn! on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from The Byrds’ Turn! Turn! Turn! that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
A time for love, a time for hate, a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.