Good times with The Monkees: Bands we love to discredit

It’s just another Pleasant Valley Sunday. You’re listening to some oldies while taking the Last Train to Clarksville. You’re staring out the window like the Daydream Believer that you are. Gotten the hint yet? Yeah, that’s right. Hey, hey, it’s the Monkees!

This month, the beloved ’60s group announced they were releasing a brand new album later this year to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Let’s get one thing straight: no, I am not just messing up the name of Alex Turner’s backing band. For those who don’t get the name recognition, The Monkees were a rock/pop group from the late 1960s chosen for the purpose of a television show.

The band, composed of Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith and Davy Jones, receive a lot of flak for their origins. They didn’t write most of their own music, weren’t originally experienced or accomplished musicians and their songs didn’t have the same substance as their quartet counterparts The Beatles, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t make waves. Tork is credited as financially assiting Jimi Hendrix’s career, and Hendrix even later opened for them. David Bowie was born David Jones but changed his stage name so as not to get confused with the then-popular Davy Jones. The Sex Pistols covered them, Kurt Cobain adorned his guitar with them, Brian Wilson was inspired by them and Breaking Bad showed meth being cooked soundtracked by them.

So why do I feel required to preface my discussion of The Monkees with a paragraph of credibility? Why is it that some bands have to fight for legitimacy in this industry? Music is filled with this idea of “bands we love to hate.” Certain genres and lots of artists are constantly preceded as a “guilty pleasure,” as if the mere enjoyment of a musician isn’t enough to validate it. Is it because the Monkees didn’t always write their own music or because their marketing schemes were so direct? Or maybe even because Davy Jones was a pretty boy or because they were backed by a laugh-tracked sitcom?

Regardless, why is it that music is broken down to its components when it’s so much more than the sum of its parts? At the end of the day, through the entire process, a song is created. When you fall in love with a person, when that person challenges you, excites you and inspires you, do you care that the person was raised in one neighborhood or another? That it was their teacher or their parent who influenced them? Or do you just enjoy the person lying next to you. So why should what goes into a song make it any less real?

“Daydream Believer” was written by John Stewart and produced by Chip Stewart. Record execs, producers and writers saw through the song before it reached Jones’ hands, but I still cry whenever I hear it. Whatever songs the boys didn’t have a large hand in creating were recreated in the recording studio by their own experiences and emotions. Dolenz once said, at the end of a Monkees episode, that he wanted to be an architect so he could build something that would last forever. I’m just a human and one day I’ll die (probably from tripping; I’m incredibly clumsy), but those four boys taught me the importance of looking beyond the surface, loving without elitism, laughing without judgment and goofing off because it’s f-cking fun. They helped me become the fun loving person I am, who doesn’t limit her adorations because of a superiority complex. Every time I’ve introduced a friend to a new band. Every time I’ve embarrassed myself to cheer up my friends. Every time I’ve remembered that severity doesn’t make a person important, sincerity does. All these times and more, created a ripple effect that will live on in some manner or another and that is an architectural structure that Dolenz created. And that is not invalidated or discredited by who wrote what songs or scripts.

Recommended playlist:

“Daydream Believer”

– The Monkees

“(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”

– The Monkees

“Shades of Grey”

– The Monkees

“Pleasant Valley Sunday”

– The Monkees

“The Girl I Knew Somewhere”

– The Monkees

“Listen to the Band”

– The Monkees

“I Wanna Be Free”

– The Monkees

“She”

– The Monkees

“Valleri”

– The Monkees

“Gonna Buy Me A Dog”

– The Monkees

Malorie McCall is a junior majoring in philosophy.  Her column, “Mal’s Mix,” runs on Fridays.