Through the years, however, appreciation for the album has steadily grown, to the point where even mainstream critics call it a classic. As it turns out, the Byrds were merely a little ahead of their time, for within the next two years, the Grateful Dead would release their very country-tinged album “Workingman’s Dead,” Creedence Clearwater Revival would bring an American-roots sound to the Top 10, and the Rolling Stones would be recording songs like “Country Honk” and “Sweet Virginia.”
 Listening to the album, it is both very easy and quite difficult to understand why “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” was a flop at the time of its release, but is now considered a classic. In 1968, it was probably considered a marketer’s worst nightmare. How could a record company promote a country album to the rock crowd? Where were the messages of solidarity with the youth movement? Where was the talk of student revolutions? Where was the thumping backbeat? Profit-minded record executives were likely not pleased with the album submitted to them (“I really don’t remember what their reaction was, but I do know we were given a lot of artistic freedom to do as we pleased,” says McGuinn), and the audience was probably a little perplexed as well. However, with the expectations of “What the New Byrds Album Will Sound Like” removed, the music stands on its own. The first number, Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” is a beautiful, gliding waltz, with Roger McGuinn singing “Whoo-ee! Ride me high/ Tomorrow's the day, My bride's gonna come/ Oh, oh, are we gonna fly, Down in the easy chair!” The backing track, as mentioned earlier, is mainly acoustic, with steel guitar flourishes. McGuinn sings in a slightly nasal, Dylan-esque way, and one gets the impression that the Dylan song was not selected by mere chance. McGuinn states that “I don’t really remember it as being a conscious choice, though we were thrilled when we heard the songs, and that’s why we covered them.” Regardless, the Dylan songs do serve as a thread to the past, keeping an element of familiarity that the audience might pick up on. Seeing as how the Byrds had already covered several Dylan songs in the past, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” seems like a natural choice to include.
 “I Am A Pilgrim,” an old country standard that McGuinn and Hillman arranged, is the second song on the album, and its presence practically screams out, “Yes, you are listening to an entire album of country music---give it a chance and you’ll enjoy it.” Even further from the Byrds’ established sound than the opening cut, “I Am A Pilgrim” opens with a fiddle playing off a banjo, and once again, the Byrds are playing in waltz-time. The song, which deals with the fleeting nature of life, and the forward gaze towards the Christian afterlife, has beautiful lyrics that read in part, “I’ve got a mother/ sister and a brother/ Who have gone, this way before/ I am determined, to go and see them, good Lord/ Over on, that other shore.” The religious theme is carried into the next track, “The Christian Life.” Originally done by the Louvin Brothers, the
song begins “My buddies tell me, that I should’ve waited/ They say I’m missing a whole world of fun/ But I still love them, and I sing with pride, I like the Christian Life.” Gram Parsons was the original vocalist on the Byrds’ version, but contractual problems forced the group to wipe his vocals and replace them with McGuinn’s. Curiously, McGuinn adopted a Parsons-style vocal for the track, as can be evidenced by the outtakes that feature Parsons singing. “It was a stop-gap measure,” says McGuinn. “I didn’t have a country singing style, so I just borrowed Gram’s. He did it much better, of course, and when we put out the boxed set, we put his originals on there.”
 The genesis of the Burritos’ albums lays in the next track, as the Byrds take on soul music and give it a country spin. “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” sung by everyone from Otis Redding to Aretha Franklin, is slowed down, put in waltz time, and sung with the kinds of harmonies that the Byrds were famous for. Prominent on the track are piano flourishes, the ever-present steel guitars, and some nice melodic changes which were added to make the song work in the country context. However, the standout track of the album, which is arguably the model on which most of today’s alt-country musicians have based the feel of their music, is the Gram Parsons gem, “Hickory Wind.”

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