Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)

This was written by Pete Seeger, an influential folk singer and activist. He recorded a demo of the song around 1961, and included a live version on his 1962 album The Bitter And The Sweet with just voice and guitar. The Byrds brought it out of folk circles with their electrified 1965 version. Released as the follow-up to their #1 hit "Mr. Tambourine Man," it also topped the chart in the US.

The lyrics were taken from a passage from the book of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8) in The Bible. They were rearranged and paired with Seeger's music to make the song. In a 1988 interview with Paul Zollo, Seeger explained: "I don't read the Bible that often. I leaf through it occasionally and I'm amazed by the foolishness at times and the wisdom at other times. I call it the greatest book of folklore ever given. Not that there isn't a lot of wisdom in it. You can trace the history of people poetically." Seeger added: "I got a letter from my publisher, and he says, 'Pete, I can't sell these protest songs you write.' And I was angry. I sat down with a tape recorder and said, 'I can't write the kind of songs you want. You gotta go to somebody else. This is the only kind of song I know how to write.' I pulled out this slip of paper in my pocket and improvised a melody to it in fifteen minutes. And I sent it to him. And I got a letter from him the next week that said, 'Wonderful! Just what I'm looking for.' Within two months he'd sold it to the Limelighters and then to the Byrds. I liked the Byrds' record very much, incidentally. All those clanging, steel guitars - they sound like bells." (this appears in Zollo's book Songwriters On Songwriting)

A folk trio called The Limeliters released an upbeat, banjo-based version in 1962.