Song Cycle is the debut album by American recording artist Van Dyke Parks, released in November 1967 by Warner Bros. Records. With the exception of three cover songs, Song Cycle was written and composed by Parks, while its production was credited to Warner Bros. staff producer Lenny Waronker. The album draws from a number of American popular music genres, including bluegrass, ragtime, and show tunes, and frames classical styles in the context of 1960s pop music. The material utilizes unconventional song structures, and lyrically explores American history and culture, reflecting Parks' history working in both the film and music industries of Southern California. Upon its release, Song Cycle was largely acclaimed by critics despite lukewarm sales, and later gained status as a cult album. In 2017, Song Cycle was ranked the 93rd greatest album of the 1960s by Pitchfork. Background In Los Angeles during the mid-1960s, Van Dyke Parks became known as an in-demand session pianist, working with such artists as The Byrds, Tim Buckley, and Paul Revere & the Raiders. At the same time, he had been unsatisfied with contemporary pop music and its increasing submissiveness to the British invasion, going so far as to say, "apart from Pet Sounds I didn't find anything striking coming out of the United States." Wanting to give "an American experience which would be uniquely disassociable from the Beatles/British pop viewpoint," he was involved with numerous works that would indulge his interest in Depression-era American pop and folk music, such as co-writing and arranging much of Harpers Bizarre's second album Anything Goes; releasing his own singles "Come to the Sunshine", "Number Nine", and most notably providing lyrical content to the Beach Boys' album Smile. For his collaborations with Brian Wilson, Parks was signed as a recording artist by Warner Bros. Records. The label reportedly expected that Parks could deliver a smashing commercial success on par with the Beach Boys at that time. During this epoch, Parks visited Frank Sinatra, who was dispirited by the rise of rock music, and was considering retirement. To help alleviate this, Parks pitched his brother Carson's song "Somethin' Stupid" as a duet for Sinatra and his daughter Nancy. Reportedly on Lee Hazlewood's advice, Sinatra recorded "Somethin' Stupid", and it became his first million-selling single. This bought credit for Parks at Warner Bros, and they proceeded to fund Parks's one single: an instrumental cover of Donovan's 1965 song "Colours".