So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star

This is a tongue-in-cheek treatise on fame and the pop music industry. Many interpreted it as a swipe at the success of manufactured rock bands like The Monkees, but Roger McGuinn of The Byrds confirmed that he and his bandmate Chris Hillman were not writing about about The Monkees, but instead the whole music business.

This is the first hit song to use a variation of the term "rock star" in the title. Rock had been around since about 1955, but the term "rock star" didn't get bandied about until the '70s, when it became a way to describe the most glamorous and intriguing men and women in the genre. Even after the term became ubiquitous, it was rarely used in song titles; the Dutch pop group Champagne hit #83 with "Rock And Roll Star" in 1977, but it wasn't until 2007, when the rock era had long since ended, that songs with that title in the term began to proliferate. That year brought us: "Party Like A Rock Star" - Shop Boyz (#2) "Rockstar" - Nickelback (#6) "Do It Just Like A Rockstar" - Freak Nasty (#45) "Rock Star" - Hannah Montana (#81) It was mostly hip-hop acts that used the term from then on, notably Rihanna with "Rockstar 101" and Post Malone with "Rockstar."

The recording was dubbed with the sound of screaming girls, taped at a Byrds show in Bournemouth, England during the band's 1965 UK tour.