Songfacts®:

• "Splendor in the Grass" is Jackie DeShannon's nostalgic song about teenage love, heartbreak, and the emotional shock of growing up. The title comes from the idea of lost innocence explored in William Wordsworth's famous poem Ode: Intimations of Immortality and in Elia Kazan's 1961 film Splendor in the Grass, starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty as two young lovers struggling with the intensity of first love.
• DeShannon wrote the song after seeing Splendor in the Grass; the lyrics capture that same sense of youthful romance and emotional discovery. She describes love through a series of firsts ("first kiss," "first goodbye," "first shame," and "first blame"), making the song less about one particular relationship than about the experience of first love and lost innocence.
• In 1965, DeShannon's "Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe" appeared on the first Byrds album, Mr. Tambourine Man. The connection led to the group backing DeShannon on a demo of "Splendor in the Grass" that she hoped to shop around. Listen closely and you can reportedly hear David Crosby providing background vocals.
  
  The Byrds were especially kind to DeShannon because she was an early supporter of them. "I think they felt sorry for me because I was at their shows every night," she recalled to Mojo magazine with a laugh. "Really, I never missed them when they were playing Ciro's or wherever on the Sunset Strip. Finally, I worked up my nerve and asked them to play on something, and they were really very kind and did that. They had such a distinctive sound, it was great to have that on my record."
• The demo caught the attention of the girl group The Boys, who recorded their own version, released in April 1965. DeShannon eventually put her original demo out herself as the B-side of "Come and Get Me" in April 1966. A couple of years later, she revisited the song with a more polished arrangement for her 1968 album Me About You.