Release and Legacy
Fifth Dimension was released on July 18, 1966 in the United States (catalogue item CL 2549 in mono, CS 9349 in stereo) and September 22, 1966 in the UK (catalogue item BPG 62783 in mono, SBPG 62783 in stereo). It peaked at #24 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, during a chart stay of 28 weeks, and reached #27 in the United Kingdom. The album's front cover featured a photograph taken by the graphic design company Horn/Griner and also featured the first appearance of The Byrds' colorful psychedelic mosaic logo. The preceding "Eight Miles High" single was released on March 14, 1966 in the U.S. and April 29, 1966 in the UK, reaching #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #24 on the UK Singles Chart. A second single, "5D (Fifth Dimension)", was released on June 13, 1966 in America and July 29, 1966 in the UK, peaking at #44 on the Billboard Hot 100 but failing to chart in the UK. A third single taken from the album, "Mr. Spaceman", was issued on September 6, 1966 and reached #36 on the Billboard Hot 100 but again, failed to chart in the UK.
Upon its release, contemporary critical reaction to the album was somewhat tepid, although Hit Parader described the album as "the third and best album from The Byrds." The Hit Parader review also made reference to the recent controversy surrounding the album's two preceding singles by suggesting "If your friendly neighborhood radio station banned 'Eight Miles High' and '5D' you can listen to them here and discover that there's nothing suggestive about them. The only danger in this album is that it might addict you to groovy music." However, journalist Jon Landau, writing in Crawdaddy!, was less complimentary about the album and cited the departure of Gene Clark as a contributing factor in its artistic failure: "Unfortunately, they recently lost Gene Clark and the new album suffers greatly from this loss." Landau concluded his review by opining that the album "cannot be considered up to the standards set by The Byrds' first two and basically demonstrates that they should be thinking in terms of replacing Gene Clark instead of just trying to carry on without him." In the UK, Disc magazine was also critical of the album, bemoaning a lack of energy in the album's contents and commenting "Here then are those Byrds with the fresh eager exciting music sounding like tired and disillusioned old men looking back on the happy days. This is a sad sound indeed." In more recent years, Richie Unterberger, writing for the Allmusic website, has described Fifth Dimension as "wildly uneven", noting that the album's short-comings prevent it "from attaining truly classic status."
Despite its inconsistency, Fifth Dimension is today regarded as a highly influential, albeit transitional, album that is musically more experimental than the band's previous recorded output. The album can also be seen as a testament to the rapidity with which pop music was evolving during the mid-1960s. Like its predecessor, Turn! Turn! Turn!, the album was made under trying circumstances, with the band scrambling to compensate for the loss of their main songwriter in the wake of Clark's departure. This resulted in an uneven album that included a total of four cover versions and an instrumental. However, the album actually contained fewer covers than either of their Clark-era albums did, as well as an absence of songs by Bob Dylan, whose material, along with Clark's, had dominated earlier Byrds' releases.
Fifth Dimension was remastered at 20-bit resolution and partially remixed as part of the Columbia/Legacy Byrds series. It was reissued in an expanded form on April 30, 1996, with six bonus tracks, including the RCA versions of "Why" and "Eight Miles High". The final track on the CD extends to include a hidden promotional radio interview with McGuinn and Crosby, dating from 1966. The interview is open-ended and formatted with gaps between the group's answers, whereby a disc jockey could insert himself asking scripted questions, giving the illusion that The Byrds were being interviewed in person.
On April 26, 2005, Sundazed Records issued a compilation of outtakes from the Fifth Dimension recording sessions, titled Another Dimension.
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