[2] The material on the album mostly consists of cover versions of folk songs, primarily composed by Bob Dylan, and originals written or co-written by singer Gene Clark.

[4][2] The term "folk rock" was first coined by the American music press to describe the Byrds' sound in mid-1965, around the same time that the Mr. Tambourine Man album was released.

[6] The band's hybrid of a British Invasion beat, jangly guitar playing, and poetic or socially conscious lyrics influenced a number of acts in the mid-1960s and has also been influential on successive generations of musicians.

[25] Melcher felt confident that the band's then-unissued debut single would be, at the very least, a regional hit, so he brought the Byrds back into the studio on March 8, 1965 to record a follow-up.

[24] This March 8 recording session yielded the version of "All I Really Want to Do" that appears on the album, but the song was re-recorded on April 14, and it was this later take that graced the A-side of the band's second Columbia single release.

[6] The song, which told the sorrowful tale of a coal mining disaster in Wales, was a relative newcomer to the band's repertoire at the time of recording, having only been worked up in March 1965, during the Byrds' residency at Ciro's nightclub on the Sunset Strip.

[4] The band's version of "The Bells of Rhymney" was also influential on the Beatles, particularly George Harrison, who co-opted McGuinn's guitar riff and incorporated it into his composition "If I Needed Someone" from the Rubber Soul album.

[6] The song bore a passing resemblance to the Searchers' 1963 hit "Needles and Pins" and has, since its release, become a rock music standard, inspiring several cover versions over the years.

[24][29][30] Clark's melancholy, mid-tempo ballad "Here Without You" details a bittersweet trip through the city during which every landmark and physical object reminds the singer of an absent lover, while the aforementioned "I Knew I'd Want You" is a Beatlesque minor key 68 shuffle recounting the first flushes of romance.

[4] Another two songs on the album were co-written by Clark and McGuinn: "You Won't Have to Cry", which featured a lyric concerned with a woman who has been wronged in love, and "It's No Use", which anticipated the harder-edged, psychedelic sound the band would begin to explore towards the end of 1965 and throughout 1966.

[6] In Rogan's opinion, the band gave the latter song a very sardonic reading, influenced by its appearance in the final scene of Stanley Kubrick's movie Dr.

[4] The album's distinctive front cover fisheye lens photograph of the band was taken by Barry Feinstein at the bird sanctuary in Griffith Park, Los Angeles.

[33] The back cover featured liner notes, written in the form of an open letter to a friend, by Columbia Records' publicist Billy James.

In addition, the back cover also featured a black and white photograph, taken by the Byrds' manager Jim Dickson, of the band on stage with Bob Dylan at Ciro's nightclub in L.A.[19] Mr. Tambourine Man was released on June 21, 1965, in the United States (catalogue item CL 2372 in mono, CS 9172 in stereo) and August 20, 1965, in the UK (catalogue item BPG 62571 in mono, SBPG 62571 in stereo).

[10][11] Upon release, critical reaction to the album was almost universally positive, with Billboard magazine noting that "the group has successfully combined folk material with pop-dance beat arrangements.

[5] Nonetheless, the Dylan covers, including "Chimes of Freedom", "All I Really Want to Do", "Spanish Harlem Incident", and "Mr. Tambourine Man", remain among the Byrds' best-known recordings.

[3][27][39] In the months following the release of the Mr. Tambourine Man album, many acts began to imitate the Byrds' hybrid of a British Invasion beat, jangly guitar playing, and poetic or socially conscious lyrics.

[3][7] The band's influence can be heard in many recordings released by American acts in 1965 and 1966, including the Turtles, Simon & Garfunkel, the Lovin' Spoonful, Barry McGuire, the Mamas & the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, We Five, Love, and Sonny & Cher.