Green Tambourine the band’s debut album, released in 1968, was a compromise––half of the songs are pop-oriented, label pleasers, whereas the other half are rock-based songs written by the band members themselves. The resulting album is an eclectic mix of genres and subgenres that actually works surprisingly well together. Although the band was quite reluctant to record the songs the label had written for them, these songs are surprisingly good. “Green Tambourine” was obviously the most successful song on the album, but just because it did well on the charts, does not mean that it is overly poppy or simplistic. It has a strong melody with just enough psychedelic rock influence to keep it from being a cookie cutter bubblegum song.