Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds

Mr. Tambourine Man, the Byrds' debut album, came out on Columbia on June 21, 1965, with Terry Melcher producing, and it's the sound of American rock answering the British Invasion and scoring a direct hit. Jim McGuinn's chiming 12-string Rickenbacker and the band's soaring harmonies are the whole calling card, with Gene Clark, David Crosby, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke rounding out the original five.

The songs split between folk covers, mostly Bob Dylan's, and originals that Clark wrote or co-wrote, and the trick is marrying heady, literate words to electric guitars and a rock backbeat. The press coined "folk rock" for it that same summer. The title single had already gone to number one on both sides of the Atlantic that April, and "All I Really Want to Do", another Dylan tune, cracked the UK top ten. It remains the band's biggest album on either chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.