The Monkees - ‘Mary Mary’
I missed them as a kid. I just got into them a couple of years ago. I’ve been really getting into them recently and getting into the idea that they were the first punk band. They just picked up instruments on the set and became a real band and fired all the people who told them that they couldn’t do that. Their production is very inventive which is no longer asked of people. I think they hired their favourite people and the best songwriters. People say they were shit because they didn’t write their own songs or play their own instruments. Not only is this not exactly true but I also think, “Well, Meryl Streep doesn’t write her own lines.” They were going for the best guys. The inventive production was so notable that it would be considered off-puttingly strange today. And this was a 60s pop band for teenage girls. So in my book they win. They’re melodically fascinating, they don’t hurt anyone’s feelings, they set a tone for that decade which has aged very well. It’s never become uncool to sound like The Monkees.