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

Pete Seeger wrote it, usually dated 1959 though he said 1954, from Ecclesiastes 3 in the King James Bible with his own title phrase and closing lines. The Limeliters recorded it in 1962, Seeger put it on The Bitter and the Sweet, and McGuinn arranged it for Judy Collins in 1963.

The Byrds recorded it at Columbia in Hollywood in September 1965 with Terry Melcher producing and McGuinn singing lead, in a reported 78 takes. The single came out on 1 October with Gene Clark's She Don't Care About Time on the B-side. It entered the Hot 100 at number 80 on 23 October and reached number one on 4 December. It finished 1965 as the third biggest single of the year in Billboard, and was number one in New Zealand and number three in Canada. It stopped at 26 in Britain.

Seeger directed 45 percent of his royalties from it to an Israeli committee against house demolitions in 1999. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001 and was used in the film Forrest Gump. Richie Unterberger called it folk rock's highest possible grace note.

Live

All five original Byrds played it at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1991, and McGuinn and Hillman used it in the encore of the 2018 Sweetheart of the Rodeo anniversary shows.

Library of Congress

The recording was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2026. In the registry essays, Richie Unterberger recounts Seeger's own account that his publisher wrote to him around 1959 asking for another song like Goodnight Irene. Stephanie Ledgin, citing the booklet of the box set There Is a Season, writes that it was the first Byrds single to feature all five members on the studio recording.