Younger Than Yesterday |
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Released: February 6, 1967 Peak: 24 US, 37 UK, 5 CN, -- AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Genre: folk rock |
Tracks:Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks)
Total Running Time: 29:11 1996 CD reissue bonus tracks:
The Players:
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Rating: 4.209 out of 5.00 (average of 33 ratings) Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album:“The Byrds’ fourth album saw the group expanding on the eclecticism of 1966’s Fifth Dimension.” RD “Younger Than Yesterday was somewhat overlooked at the time of its release during an intensely competitive era that found the Byrds on a commercial downslide. However, time has shown it to be the most durable of the Byrds’ albums, with the exception of Mr. Tambourine Man.” AMIt is “ambitiously wide-ranging, beautifully performed, and featuring some of their most lasting work.” RD “David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, and especially Chris Hillman come into their own as songwriters on an eclectic but focused set blending folk-rock, psychedelia, and early country-rock.” AM The SongsThe album featured the chart hits So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star and My Back Pages, yet another Bob Dylan cover. Have You Seen Her Face was also a minor hit.“Thoughts and Words was a flower-power anthem.” AM “The jazzy Everybody’s Been Burned may be Crosby’s best composition” AM and “ranks among the finest of all Byrds tracks.” RD It features “Crosby’s crystal-clear, heartfelt vocal complemented by Hillman’s fluid bassline and a wonderfully understated McGuinn guitar solo.” RD However, Crosby’s “Mind Gardens is one of his most excessive.” AM It is “a piece of psychedelic philosophizing complete with Shakespearean references.” RD He also “contributed the sparkling Renaissance Fair, inspired by a medieval festival held by an L.A. radio station.” RD “CTA-102 saw the Byrds experimenting with studio trickery to produce sci-fi sound effects.” RD “The bluegrass-tingled Time Between” AM and The Girl with No Name offered “the group’s first serious inroads into country music.” RD Here are more details about some of the songs on this album. |
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So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll StarThe Byrds |
Writer(s): Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman Recorded: Nov. 28 – Dec. 1, 1966 Released: 1/9/1967 (single), Younger Than Yesterday (1967), Greatest Hits (compilation, 1967), History of the Byrds (compilation, 1973), The Byrds (box set, 1990), 20 Essential Tracks from the Boxed Set (compilation, 1992), The Very Best of (compilation, 1997), The Essential (compilation, 2003), There is a Season (box set, 2006) B-Side: “Everybody’s Been Burned” Peak: 29 BB, 28 CB, 27 GR, 31 HR, 9 CL, 5 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 5.74 streaming |
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Song:“The sardonic So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star was a terrific single” AM that “satirized teenybop faves such as the Monkees, who had achieved massive success without playing on their own records.” RD Roger McGuinn said the song came about when he was reminiscing with Chris Hillman. “We were looking at the teenybopper magazines, like Tiger Beat and looking at the tremendous turnover…It was like a big merry-go-round. So we said, ‘Let’s write a little satirical song about it.’ The screaming I recorded myself with a cassette recorder during one of our concerts over in England.” SJCritic Dave Marsh attacked the song for being “a lyrical crock,” saying it sounded “pretty sanctimonious coming from the two biggest folkies in the Byrds…That is, from two guys in the group who most felt that they had sold their ‘soul to the company / That is waiting there to spell plastic wares.’” DM However, Marsh also acknowledged that “for all its cautionary admonitions, the music makes ‘Rock ‘n’ Rol Star’ so enticing that it’s surely spawned more bands than it’s discouraged.” DM Tom Petty was certainly a Byrds’ devotee; he recorded a live version of the song in 1985 that became a top-ten album rock hit. |
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My Back PagesThe Byrds |
Writer(s): Bob Dylan Recorded: Dec. 5-8, 1966 at Columbia Records in Hollywood, California Released: 3/13/1967 (single), Younger Than Yesterday (1967), Greatest Hits (compilation, 1967), History of the Byrds (compilation, 1973), The Byrds Play Dylan (compilation, 1979), The Byrds (box set, 1990), 20 Essential Tracks from the Boxed Set (compilation, 1992), The Very Best of (compilation, 1997), The Essential (compilation, 2003), There is a Season (box set, 2006) B-Side: “Renaissance Fair” Peak: 30 BB, 26 CB, 22 GR, 26 HR, 14 CL, 10 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 26.35 streaming |
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Song:“No one covered Bob Dylan songs more masterfully than the Byrds, and this is one of their most richly satisfying Dylan interpretations of all.” SS The Byrds burst out of the gate in 1965 with a #1 cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” one of four songs originally written by Dylan that appeared on their debut album. This was their second most successful Dylan cover, after the aforementioned “Mr. Tambourine Man,” reaching the top 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.“My Back Pages” is “a confession by a young man who had been aflame with the ideological passions of youth that the world is not as black and white as he had imagined. It was a renunciation of politics and ‘finger pointing’ to focus on introspection.” SS Dylan first recorded it for his 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan, but it was “a less than vibrant original performance.” SS He recorded it in the early morning hours and sounds tired. The Byrds, however, “brought out the song’s full potential.” SS “With vivid lyrics, the reedy McGuinn voice and jangly twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar, and those timeless group harmonies in full glory, this is an undeniable classic.” SS |
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Have You Seen Her FaceThe Byrds |
Writer(s): Chris Hillman Recorded: 11/28/66 – 12/1/66 at Columbia Records in Hollywood, California Released: 5/22/1967 (single), Younger Than Yesterday (1967), The Byrds (box set, 1990), 20 Essential Tracks from the Boxed Set (compilation, 1992), The Essential (compilation, 2003), There is a Season (box set, 2006) B-Side: “Don’t Make Waves” First Charted: 6/3/1967 Peak: 74 BB, 73 CB, 58 HR, 39 CL Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 4.62 streaming About the Song“This is Hillman’s first solo credit…The inspiration came after Hillman attended recording sessions for ‘So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ and he wrote it when working with Hugh Masekela and other South African musicians.” MC-58 His songwriting style “offset Crosby’s jazz/psychedelic experiments and McGuinn’s increasing obsession with studio trickery.” MC-58“His understated Harrison-singing-a-McCartney-song vocal style is a subtle counterpoint to his melodic Beatlesque bass lines. The song is like Merseybeat shot-through with the new hip Los Angeles scene.” MC-58 “It’s like an early version of Britpop melodicism.” MC-58 |
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Lady FriendThe Byrds |
Writer(s): David Crosby Recorded: 4/26/67, 6/14/67, 6/21/67 at Columbia Records in Hollywood, California Released: 7/13/1967 (single), Younger Than Yesterday (1996 reissue of 1967 album), History of the Byrds (compilation, 1973), The Byrds (box set, 1990), 20 Essential Tracks from the Boxed Set (compilation, 1992), The Essential (compilation, 2003), There is a Season (box set, 2006) B-Side: “Old John Robertson” Peak: 82 BB, 77 CB, 71 HR, 41 CL Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.50 streaming About the SongThis was the only A-side from the Byrds that was written solely by David Crosby. The song appeared on the CD reissue of Younger Than Yesterday. “This work of great maturity is one of the band’s finest moments” MC-65 and “one of the Byrds’ greatest singles.” MC-64“With its glorious reverb,” MC-64 “three-part harmonies, jazzlike drumming, and chorus of trumpets flying over the rapturous guitar riff, it sounds like an angelic choir on amphetamines” MC-65 The “punchy rock production, the horns, in particular, preempt a lot of late-1960s psychedelic rock.” MC-64 “It should’ve been a Summer of Love hit” MC-64 “considering it has the same euphoric feel as The Turtles’ ‘Happy Together’ or one of those harmony-soaked Association tracks) like the bridge on ‘Never My Love’).” MC-64 “Crosby oversaw the whole recording and eventually replaced his bandmates’ backing vocals with his own. The group felt it was a good song but were furious he’d gone back into the studio without telling them. Hillman reckons this is where it started to fall apart with Crosby.” MC-65 |
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First posted 4/7/2008; last updated 10/23/2026. |
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