Psychobabble's Favorite (and Not So Favorite) Monkees Songs...161 of Them Ranked!

A list of The Monkees' best-loved songs will inevitably be a cartload of the obvious topped with the usual suspects. "Daydream Believer". "I'm a Believer". "Last Train to Believer". Etcetera. That is not what follows. 

The Monkees were the first band I fell in love with, but it was not the big hits that caught my attention. It was the group's pervasive weirdness, which tends to get steamrolled in discussions of how cute, sweet, bubblegum, and ersatz they were. If The Monkees were the unadventurous, pre-fab, teeny-bopper bait they'd been accused of being for much of their career, I would never have paid them much mind. But that image is bullshit, although it does seemingly hold true for some of the songs that appear down at the bottom of this list, which is limited to their first-phase work (I refuse to ever listen to Pool It, if only out of respect for the band). 

These are very personal choices, hence the title of this post, and I'll do my best to express my reasoning, which will likely cause Believers to smash a piano with a sledgehammer while Nes, dressed as Zappa, conducts.  

Farewell, Mike Nesmith

Where to begin with an artist who spearheaded a genuine revolution in the most corporate sector of the music industry, who helped pioneer jangly country-psychedelic-rock (in conjunction with The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield), who produced such oddball movies as Repo Man and Tapeheads, who wrote one of the few rock autobiographies worth reading, and for all intents and purposes, invented MTV? 

No Monkee defied that group's wholly erroneous reputation for bubblegum weightlessness more than Mike Nesmith. Underneath that green wool hat was a brain that never stopped inventing. From the very beginning of The Monkees' career, he was writing and producing some of the most inventive and exhilarating tracks on their records. He was the dry wit and leader of the group's fictionalized incarnation, but he also led bandmates Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz (as well as a reluctant Davy Jones) in a swift revolution that saw this made-for-TV band wrestle control from old-school music supervisor Don Kirshner to take full control of their own music. It was Mike who hired former-Turtle Chip Douglas to produce The Monkees' new-phase records--and taught Douglas how to produce records!--which resulted in the best albums the group ever made. He sneaked such genuinely weird articles as the Cajun-flavored "Sweet Young Thing", the nightmarish psych-prog "Writing Wrongs", the eerie and poetic ode to the Sunset-Strip riots "Daily Nightly", the lysergic country idle "Auntie's Municipal Court" (co-written with the recently departed Keith Allison), and the 1920s pastiche "Magnolia Simms" (complete with built-in record skips!) onto so-called "bubblegum" albums. His fusion of country-rock and psychedelic-era production techniques and surreal lyricism made his post-Monkees albums with The First National Band truly revolutionary.

Mike was my personal favorite Monkee because of his truly unique music and voice and a demeanor so cool he made wearing a green wool hat not embarrassing (and yet totally, wonderfully dorky). At age twelve, I started combing my hair in a dip in mimicry of his iconic do. I still do. And he was the voice of my favorite Monkees song. Sadly, he died today of natural causes, according to his family. 

Update: Nesmith apparently died of heart failure (he'd had quadruple bypass heart surgery in 2018), and according to Micky Dolenz, he'd entered hospice a few days before his death.

The Monkees A to Z

“Madness!! Auditions. Folk & Roll musicians-singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank’s-types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview.”

We all know what happened after this ad was published in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter in September 1965. Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Davy Jones may have had varying levels of success “coming down” for their interviews, but interview they did, and one year later, they could all be seen glaring out from the cover of their debut album and capering on a new hit series The Monkees, which debuted on this very day in 1966.

Fifty years later, The Monkees seem to be as popular as ever, and more importantly, have finally gotten the critical approval they should have been getting since Micky first crooned “Last Train to Clarksville”. For many of us, The Monkees also provided an accessible introduction to the pop world when we were still a little too young for The Beatles’ complexity, the Stones’ luridness, or The Who’s violence (yet, somehow, we were ready for “Writing Wrongs”. Go figure). I’ve been a Monkees freak for thirty years now, and my obsession with the TV/recording/stage/screen sensations has left me with a wealth of Monkee facts and figures I am about to bounce off your million-dollar head in a feature I call…

Here we come...

OK, let’s address the big, smelly ape in the room with our very first entry. So, The Monkees did not form in a garage the way most bands do. They were put together by TV show producers for mostly commercial reasons, to cash in on the ongoing phenomenal success of The Beatles (see B), and to attempt to recreate the irreplaceable magic of A Hard Day’s Night and Help! for boob-tube audiences. This does not mean The Monkees weren’t artists. Micky had done his time in a garage band sometimes known as Micky and The One Nighters, and more coincidentally, The Missing Links, and possessed a voice of magnificent range and dramatics. Peter Tork was a hat-passing folkie with an extraordinary knack for picking up instruments (piano, guitar, banjo, bass, French horn, etc.) that made him The Monkees’ own John Entwistle or Brian Jones-style jack-of-all-trades. Davy Jones had been an acclaimed Broadway song-and-dance man, and Mike Nesmith was a composer, performer, and recording artist. The boys brought their individual talents to a project that didn’t necessarily need and really didn’t want them. By asserting their artistry on records that were going to sell millions whether or not Peter picked his banjo on the sessions, he, Micky, Mike, and Davy made the Monkees’ albums better than was necessary. Consequently, efforts such Headquarters; Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD.; and Head became albums as timeless as much of what The Monkees’ organically formed peers were making in the mid-sixties.

The guys’ original compositions also made for some of the most interesting tracks on those records, and we’re not just talking about those of seasoned composer Mike Nesmith, whose pure country (“Good Clean Fun”, “Don’t Wait for Me”), pure rock (“Mary Mary”, “Circle Sky”), country-rock (“Sunny Girlfriend”, “You Told Me”), and country-psychedelia (“Tapioca Tundra”, “Auntie’s Municipal Court”) were consistently invigorating. Peter Tork’s “For Pete’s Sake” was strong and vital enough to serve as the series’ closing theme during season two, and his “Can You Dig It?” and “Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?” helped bring the ultra-hip Head soundtrack to life. Micky Dolenz’s “Randy Scouse Git” was strong enough to become the first Monkee-composed single A-side (at least in England where it was retitled “Alternate Title” and went to #2), and his “Mommy and Daddy” was a piece of unflinching agit-prop aimed at pre-teen revolutionaries. Even Davy Jones matured into a composer capable of such fine pieces as “Dream World” and the tough-as-shit “You and I”. Had The Monkees never expressed themselves as artists on songs such as these, it is likely I would not be writing about them right now and you wouldn’t care to read about them.

 

21 Underrated Songs by The Monkees You Need to Hear Now!

I’ve done quite a few of these “21 Underrated Songs You Need to Hear Now” lists, but this is the one that matters most, because none of the other groups I’ve covered are as misunderstood as The Monkees. Ridiculed during their time for being phonies because they formed on a TV studio back lot and not in a garage, The Monkees were painted as a quartet of no-talent, bubblegum salesmen. Anyone with ears who heard their best hits could detect this wasn’t true, even if the guys rarely contributed more than their considerable vocal talents to those charting singles. But as far as I’m concerned, you have to dig a bit deeper to uncover the songs that really made The Monkees extraordinary. Some of these non-hits—such as “Randy Scouse Git” (which actually was a hit in the UK), “Shades of Gray”, “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round?”, “Saturday’s Child”, “Mary Mary”, “Goin’ Down”, and “For Pete’s Sake”—have been well represented enough on hits compilations that they can’t really be called underrated anymore. A lot of other Monkees recordings have gotten a lot less exposure than they deserve. So for anyone who still holds to that increasingly outdated opinion that Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz (celebrating his 70^th birthday today), Peter Tork, and Davy Jones weren’t truly talented, truly original singers, musicians, writers, and producers really does need to hear the following 21 underrated songs.

1. “Papa Gene’s Blues” (from the album The Monkees) 1966

The Monkees were rarely taken seriously during their own time, but fortunately a lot of the stupid prejudices to which they were subjected have faded over time. Today it’s hard to feature anyone not succumbing to the exhilaration of Mike’s Tex-Mex jambalaya “Papa Gene’s Blues”. With its rising and falling chord progression and simplistically joyful chorus, it remains one of Nes’s freshest compositions. With its intricate web of percussion and twangy guitars, it is one of his most magnetic productions. Mike deserves extra credit for demanding Peter Tork be allowed to pick his acoustic in the backline, thus taking the first tentative step toward making The Monkees a real group.

2. “Sweet Young Thing” (from the album The Monkees) 1966

Despite composing some high quality material on his own, Mike Nesmith still couldn’t catch any respect from music supervisor Don Kirschner, who insisted he work with the more seasoned duo of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. The experience wasn’t pleasant for anyone involved, and Mike apparently said something that reduced Carole to tears at one point. Fortunately, something great came out of the forced collaboration, the stomping, careening Cajun funk “Sweet Young Thing”. Like “Papa Gene’s Blues”, it was a real pop anomaly in ’66, and I certainly haven’t heard anything that sounds like it since. I don’t care if Mike wasn’t the guy whacking out those fuzz chords or sawing away at the fiddle (session man Jimmy Bryant deserves credit for that dizzying touch), he produced this thing, and it’s the production that makes the fairly simplistic composition come alive.

3. “All of Your Toys” (unreleased until 1987’s Missing Links compilation) recorded 1967

Review: 'Don Kirshner: The Man with the Golden Ear'

In a business that canonizes artists, writers, and producers, Don Kirshner is the rare pop music publisher to achieve household name status. Much of his fame is due to his hosting of his own tremendously successful music series, “In Concert”, during the ‘70s. It is also due to the unusual role he played pioneering the ‘60s bubblegum sound, first as the dominating music coordinator behind The Monkees, then as a veritable Gepetto who brought cartoon band The Archies to life by helping “them” score a massive hit with “Sugar Sugar”. But even without such odd side roads, Kirshner would still deserve his own chapter in the Rock & Roll history books for assembling the reserve of songwriters who sweated over their pianos in Manhattan’s Brill Building to craft classics like “Uptown”, “The Loco-Motion”, “Up on the Roof”, “One Fine Day”, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and countless others for Kirshner and partner Al Nevins’s Aldon Music company. These writers—Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Neil Sedaka, Jack Keller—may not have had the successful careers they enjoyed had they not caught the “golden ear” of Don Kirshner.

Rich Podolsky’s new book Don Kirshner: The Man with the Golden Ear is not as much a straight biography of Kirshner as it is a vivid account of the post-‘50s, pre-British Invasion years in which Aldon hits infused the air waves. And it is as much the story of that stable of writers as it is Kirshner’s tale. This is integral since the supporting players of Don Kirshner are a more colorful than the straight-laced title character, who often fades into the background after, say, discovering Connie Francis or surmising that “I Love How You Love Me” would be a hit without hearing more than the song’s title. Kirshner’s staid exploits aren’t as attention snatching as Goffin and King’s volatile relationship and preternatural artistry.

The extensive interviews Podolsky conducted are the backbone of his book, which is a bit freewheeling stylistically. He begins in narrative mode, using dialogue to entertaining effect, before shirking off that inspired conceit to tell his story in a more conventional biographical manner. Although the shift means the storytelling becomes less interesting, the story remains essential, and Podolsky does a terrific job of setting the early-‘60s record industry scene, when singers and songwriters were rarely the same people. The Brill Building comes to life as a family home overseen by Papa Kirshner, for whom Podolsky clearly has tremendous affection, referring to the publisher as his “hero” right from the book’s introduction. The writer sometimes takes his hero-worship a bit too far, bending facts to overstate Kirshner’s achievements. Podolsky claims The Monkees never had another number one hit after they fired Kirshner in early 1967 (“Daydream Believer” was number one for a month at the end of the year), and seems to agree with producer “Snuff” Garrett’s assessment that the boys were “assholes” for wanting the freedom to make music they way they wanted to make it. What young artist doesn’t want that? He credits the ‘70s series “In Concert” with launching the career of Van Morrison (who had a top ten hit with “Brown Eyed Girl” back in ’67) and giving The Who their first shot on American T.V. (they’d made an explosive appearance on “The Smothers Brothers Show”, also in ’67). However, Don Kirshner is such swift, entertaining, and generally informative reading that such flaws may be worth overlooking.

Tales from the Psychobabble Search Engine Terms: the worst monkees song

Have you ever wondered what search engine terms lead the dedicated few to accessing Psychobabble? Me neither! However, some of these terms are so oddly intriguing, so intriguingly odd, that I’ve been exploring them in a new feature called Tales from the Psychobabble Search Engine Terms!



Term
the worst monkees song

Date Searched

January 14, 2011

Possible Purpose

I’d bet my chest hair that the searcher of the term “the worst monkees song” already had a pretty good idea of what he or she believes to be the worst Monkees song. Such a query can only spew forth opinions, so I’m guessing that this person was really looking for justification of his/her opinion about the crappiest Monkees track. I’ve done this myself on occasion. Every time I see the “Post-Modern Prometheus” episode of “The X-Files” I’m compelled to search for “worst X-Files Postmodern Prometheus” to find out if anyone else out in Internet Land shares my opinion that this turd, which is often ranked as one of the series’ best, is in fact, its worst. Why? A little justification; a little hope that I’m not the sole rational “X-Files” viewer who recognizes that a lighthearted romp about a Cher-loving mutant rape monster is unwatchable dreck.

Back on topic, let’s take a look at what our Google search for “the worst monkees song” reveals. Well, firstly there are refreshingly few results when one plugs in this term surrounded by quotation marks. Nice. I was expecting a slew of posts by bitter hippies answering this question with “all of them.” The once-reviled Monkees have undergone fairly serious reevaluation over the past twenty or so years, and most pundits no longer cling to the erroneous assertion that The Monkees never wrote their songs, never exhibited a lick of talent, and never “played their own instruments” (I believe Peter Tork once responded to this age-old bellyache with the witty retort—and I’m paraphrasing here—“No, we don’t play our own instruments. We borrowed them”). Monkees fans no longer have to hide their copies of Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD. when their snobby buddies visit.
No problems here.


Of course, this does not mean that The Monkees pooped nothing but pearls. A fair number of their songs were pretty lousy and fully support the common gripe that they made low-grade pap for pre-teens. I’m happy to report that two of our Google Search results do, indeed, accurately identify The Monkees’ worst song. The first does not, although it comes pretty close. A customer review on the itunes page for the boys’ penultimate record, The Monkees Present , calls out “Ladies Aid Society” as the worst Monkees song. Close, friend, close! Culled from sessions for More of the Monkees, this piece of bubblegum trash nearly sinks an album of relatively sophisticated music. Late in their career, the guys fully developed and honed their musical personalities: Mike Nesmith, with his assertive country-rock, Micky Dolenz, with his affinity for lounge jazz and avant weirdness, and even Davy Jones, whose adult-contemporary pop confections were finally truly fit for adult consumption. Sadly, none of these musical directions resembled The Monkees’ sound from when they were actually selling records, so The Powers That Be at Colgems records records performed an archival dig that resulted in the worst song tacked onto Present: the truly awful “Ladies Aid Society”, as flaccid a protest against officious moralizers as you’re likely to hear.


The other search result that doesn’t quite answer the query correctly identifies a track called “Moving in with Rico” from the 1987 reunion record Pool It! I don’t doubt that this track is terrible, but I can't say for sure because I’ve never tortured myself by listening to Pool It!. I will, however, suggest that choosing a track from an album made 20 years after a band’s heyday—and one made in the eighties, no less—is like shooting ducks in your bathtub.


Fortunately, commentators in the final two search results get it right. According to one Darren Andrews of Pandora’s More of the Monkees page and “sunshine eyes” of (brace yourself, seekers of Monkees credibility) The Partridge Family Bulletin Board, the worst of the worst is “The Day We Fall in Love”.

Following a guitar lick that cops the intro of The Stones’ “Tell Me”, Davy Jones begins reciting all the nightmarishly precious things that will occur on the day he falls in love with you. “There’ll be birds singin’ everywhere and the wind will be blowin’ through your hair, I’ll look in your eyes and wait for the prize, your lips kissing mine…” Careful kissing these lips, Davy, lest yours taste the vomit that just climbed up my esophagus.

The worst Monkees tracks were the ones that most played into the group’s status as teeny bop idols. Yes, sometimes the guys went too far in the opposite direction, indulging in bizarre, very teen-unfriendly experiments. But I’d still much rather listen to Micky sing the praises of his cat and lament his fame in keening falsetto on “Shorty Blackwell” or Mike caterwaul over a turgid pipe organ on “Writing Wrongs” than hear about how Davy’s gonna look in my eyes and wait for my prize. Regardless of its awfulness, there’s no mystery regarding why music director Don Kirshner selected this composition by Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell (who wrote the genuinely wonderful “A Lover’s Concerto” for The Toys, as well as The Monkees’ very good “I’ll Be Back Up On My Feet”) for The Monkees’ second album. The idea of Davy Jones, that ultimate idol of the sexually latent set, reciting a litany of vapid romantic declarations in the first person to his legions of little fans must have ignited Tex Avery-style dollar signs in Kirshner’s eyes. Chances are the guy who chose cartoon characters for his next protégés after The Monkees fired him wasn’t going to recognize the cynical horridness of “The Day We Fall In Love”.

Don Kirshner sez: "Well, at least these guys can’t sack me."

File this mystery under : solved…

Meet the Song of the Day: “Love Is Only Sleeping” by The Monkees

In late 1967 The Monkees were still a viable moneymaking enterprise. They’d had three number one albums, two massive number one singles in a pleasantly poppy vein, and an additional two top-five hits. Neil Diamond’s “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You” (number 2 in spring ’67) pushed The Monkees deeper into the teeny-bop territory that offended both critics and the boys in the band, but it also had decidedly positive results when bubblegum-inclined musical director Don Kirshner was fired for releasing the record. 

Left to choose, write, and record their own music, The Monkees released their first great album, Headquarters, two months later. Their first great single, “Pleasant Valley Sunday” (number 3 in summer ’67), followed after another two months. The track, penned by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, was more sophisticated than any non-group composition The Monkees had yet recorded. The topic, a light jab at the generic suburban communities popping up all over the country, was more interesting than the usual “I love you, you love me, la la la” material Kirshner generally foisted on the band. The guitar riff producer Chip Douglas worked out under the inspiration of George Harrison’s “I Want to Tell You” was intricate and catchy in equal measure. The performance was incredibly dynamic, with Mike Nesmith fingering that riff flawlessly, “Fast” Eddie Hoe discharging machine gun drum fills, Douglas supplying the thrillingly upfront bass line, Peter Tork laying down an equally exciting and involved piano part, and all four Monkees contributing to the tapestry of harmonies.

“Pleasant Valley Sunday” was, indeed, an artistic breakthrough for The Monkees, even though it failed to sell quite as many copies as the three singles that preceded it. Regardless, the band and the machine that drove them remained determined to push the boundaries of what The Monkees were supposed to be even further with their next single to be released in the autumn of 1967. For the first time a track with lead vocals by Mike Nesmith would represent the band on 7”. Nesmith did not have the strongest voice in the band— Micky Dolenz was doubtlessly the most traditionally accomplished singer in The Monkees—yet his voice was the most interesting, the one that departed from the group’s bubblegum image most drastically. Nesmith’s hoarse twang is a more unique instrument than Dolenz’s pipes and infinitely more mature than Davy Jones’s munchkin chirp. Using him as lead vocalist on a single intended to sell as many copies as “Last Train to Clarksville” or “I’m a Believer” was a bold decision. 

The track was an unusual choice as well. Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil had written some of the biggest hits of the ‘60s, including The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”, Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Kicks”, The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”, and The Crystals’ “Uptown”. The Tin Pan Alley team also wrote “Shades of Gray”, the default hit from the single-devoid Headquarters. Like “Shades of Gray”, “Love Is Only Sleeping” was an unusually moody, reflective song for The Monkees, dealing with the ups and downs of a relationship in a more complex manner than anything the band had recorded yet. Like “Pleasant Valley Sunday”, “Love Is Only Sleeping” is driven by a wiry, infectious guitar riff and crisp drumming, but the combination of Nesmith’s eerie wail and the psychedelic percussive clicks and clacks that flit through the mix--plus a rather undanceable time signature that lurches between 7/8 and 4/4-- make for a less commercial and far more unsettling sound.

“Love Is Only Sleeping” had a better chance of establishing The Monkees as a serious group than any earlier single. It was primed to snap their image as bubblegum phonies in two and toss the pieces aside. Its B-side chosen, the record was ready to be pressed. Then, suddenly, the Powers That Be got cold feet. The common line is the title was too suggestive for The Monkees’ label, Colgems, apparently the implication being that “sleeping” is synonymous with “fucking.” This story is not completely unlikely. Just a few months earlier American DJs opted to flip over The Rolling Stones’ latest single in fear that the intended A-side, “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, was too risqué for U.S. teens. “Ruby Tuesday” proved a sufficiently commercial alternative, and it became The Stones’ fourth stateside number one hit.

Could the commerciality of “Ruby Tuesday” have played a role in the single’s flip, as well? And could such concerns have influenced Colgems to pass on “Love Is Only Sleeping” in favor of its proposed flipside, a song Davy Jones initially refused to sing because he thought it mediocre? I personally think this is the most likely reason Colgems tossed “Love Is Only Sleeping” in the “out” pile and went with the more typically bubblegummy “Daydream Believer” for The Monkees’ fifth single. One certainly can’t argue with the label on that level. The single became The Monkees’ first number one hit in nearly a year, remaining in the top slot until The Beatles displaced it with “Hello, Goodbye”. From a creative standpoint, the move was, at the very least, cowardly. Although it is certainly an impeccable pop production, “Daydream Believer” represents much of what critics dislike about The Monkees, with its lighter-than-air delivery, silly lyric, cutesy vocal, and sing-songy chorus: a limp counterpoint to the maturity and complexity of “Love Is Only Sleeping”. As for Mann and Weil’s usurped masterpiece, it didn’t even make it to the B-side of the “Daydream Believer” single. That honor went to a group composition that was even further out than “Love Is Only Sleeping”; a ferocious, scatting, jazz-rock freakout about a suicide attempt called “Goin’ Down”.

Like “Daydream Believer” and “Goin’ Down”, “Love Is Only Sleeping” would feature heavily in the second season of the “Monkees” TV show. The track also won a position on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones, LTD. (1967) where it contributed immensely to the album’s sophistication and fine quality. The Monkees’ next single marked the first time a Nesmith-sung number made the charts when his self-penned B-side “Tapioca Tundra” went to #34— quite a feat considering it was by far the strangest song to make its way onto a Monkees single. In 1969, Nesmith was given pride of place on two singles with a couple of his pioneering country-rock experiments, “Listen to the Band” and “Good Clean Fun”, but by that point The Monkees had fallen so far out of popular favor that Colgems execs probably couldn’t have cared less what the band released.