TL;DR:
- Carole King and Gerry Goffin co-wrote some of The Monkees’ songs that are essential classics.
- One of the tracks was the theme song for The Monkees’ only feature film, Head.
- The song in question features the sound of a dolphin or a porpoise in its mix.
Carole King wrote some of The Monkees‘ songs with her songwriting partner, Gerry Goffin. Notably, one of the songs they wrote for The Monkees became a huge hit. In addition, a Goffin-King song was recorded by The Byrds and later The Monkees.
4. ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’
Goffin and King wrote several songs for The Monkees, but the most famous is “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for 10 weeks. It’s a memorable look at suburbia and debatably the Prefab Four’s most socially conscious track. It’s also one of the group’s hardest-rocking hits, proving The Monkees and King were musically versatile.
3. ‘Porpoise Song’
“Porpoise Song” is the theme song of The Monkees’ only feature film, Head. It’s arguably the best part of the film. “Porpoise Song” is one of the greatest psychedelic songs of its time, a dreamy trip into the other side of reality.
The song incorporates the sound of a porpoise or a dolphin into the mix. While that might sound like a gimmick, it works beautifully. Micky Dolenz’s vocal performance is one of his best.
2. ‘Wasn’t Born to Follow’
King and Goffin wrote “Wasn’t Born to Follow,” which was originally recorded by The Byrds. The Monkees covered the track for their 2016 album Good Times! During a 2016 interview with Las Vegas Weekly, The Monkees’ Peter Tork discussed the album.
“The thing about this album that’s gratifying for me is that it’s not like, OK, here’s a dollop of ’60s stuff that we’re reclaiming and here’s a dollop of new stuff that we’ve jerry-rigged out of some other guys,” he said. “It’s much smoother than that. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t be able to time-place all of the music in order. That’s a great thing about it.
“For instance, on ‘Wasn’t Born to Follow,’ I played banjo over the ’60s track, so that’s a little bit of an Evian spritz in the face,” he opined. “I mean, it’s not like I couldn’t have played the banjo on it back then, but it somehow made it more present, because I did it now.”
1. ‘Star Collector’
The Monkees embraced psychedelic rock on the 1967 album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. The title of the Goffin-King composition sounds like it could be about a 2001: A Space Odyssey-style journey into the cosmos. Instead, it’s a cheeky song about groupies.
The most notable thing about “Star Collector” is that it features one of the first uses of the Moog synthesizer on a mainstream song. Notably, the Prefab Four embraced the instrument two years before the Fab Four did on 1969’s Abbey Road. If only “Star Collector” was about something a little more relatable.
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