Totally Tunes: Monkee-ing around

I really like The Monkees. I inherited my love for them through my mother, who was a fan back in their heyday. Even though they can sometimes be a pop culture punchline, they've actually been an inspiration for bands and artists throughout the decades and, even though they're two members short now, they still do their best to continue producing music with their solo projects and social media. So, here's this tribute article to them.

Via The Monkees' official channel on Giphy

We'll begin this with one of my favorite songs of theirs, a fun Nesmith-led country-lite tune (so, a Nesmith song, basically) that's actually pretty easy to play at parties, if you're set out to proselytize the Monkee gospel, which you should.

Now that we've began with a Nesmith-led tune, let's choose a Dolenz-led (and written!) one. In this particular, very fun and youth-rebellion-y one, Micky shares some moments of their UK tour, referring to The Beatles as "the four kings of EMI", with bonus lyric appearances by Mama Cass and Micky's own then-future wife. 

The late Davy Jones worked wonderfully with Neil Diamond-written songs, such as this fantastic song originally written for the band's third album but later discarded (though it ended up on Music Box, but not officially released), so the remaining Monkees decided to place it on their 2016 album Good Times! as its own standalone track.

The also late Peter Tork worked great with weird songs, as being weird was kind of his thing, so even though his tracks were never the very super ultra popular Monkees classics (some are, won't deny it), we got golden oddities such as this one:

To close, I'm gonna pick a Monkees tune I really like to highlight whenever someone goes all "oh but it's a joke band", in this song Micky goes on a full on critique of the treatment of Native communities in the US and, if you can catch the very first version, he also rambles against war, drugs, and dead politicians. It's a very angry, very musically-great track that's worth the listen.

Time for the questions! What DO you know about The Monkees? And, if you have any, what's your favorite Monkees track?