--- title: Why the Monkees Should Be in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/archive/7122792/the-monkees-should-be-in-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-times-10-part-treatise/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-04-19T10:46:45.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T06:14:25.223Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Hey, Hey Let Them In: 10 Reasons the Monkees Should Be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame og:description: Twelve performers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. The Monkees weren't one of them. TIME makes a case for the pop-rock group that changed music forever. og:url: https://time.com/archive/7122792/the-monkees-should-be-in-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-times-10-part-treatise/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Hey, Hey Let Them In: 10 Reasons the Monkees Should Be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twitter:description: Twelve performers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. The Monkees weren't one of them. TIME makes a case for the pop-rock group that changed music forever. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Hey, Hey Let Them In: 10 Reasons The Monkees Should Be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with Ally. Ally is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: July 2026. ## Ally: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Ally is a digital financial services company offering online-only banking, including checking and savings accounts, through Ally.com and its mobile apps. Launched in 2009 as an original disruptor in financial services, Ally was built to challenge outdated banking norms with a simpler, more convenient way to bank. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Apr 19, 2012 10:46 AM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Apr 19, 2012 10:46 AM UTC ## Reason No. 1: Their Chart Success 
The numbers speak for themselves: three No. 1 singles, six Top 10s, 12 Top 40s — 10 of which made it into the Top 20 — and a total of 20 Hot 100 singles. On the album charts, the Monkees were equally impressive, with four No. 1 LPs, including a self-titled debut whose 13 weeks at No. 1 remained a record for first releases until Men at Work’s Business as Usual in 1982\. The band’s Billboard numbers compare very favorably to those of the recently inducted Blondie, which scored four No. 1 wins amid its eight Top 40 entries in a similar time span.



Also, consider the time frame of those hits: 1967 is universally considered one of rock’s most vital and inspired years. And competing with such legendary albums as Sgt. Pepper, Surrealistic Pillow, The Doors, The Who Sell Out, Are You Experienced? and Forever Changes, not to mention with singles-oriented artists at their creative peaks like the Turtles and the Four Tops, the Monkees more than held their own. josephmccombs ## Reason No. 2: The Quality of Their Songs, Even Those That Weren't Hits 
The Monkees' songs appealed for all the right reasons: they were highly melodic, uplifting, enhanced by visual cues (but not dependent upon them) and occasionally innovative, as on the improvised Moog swirls in “Daily Nightly” and the controlled chaos of “Randy Scouse Git.” Billboard was especially generous to the early material, gushing, “All the excitement generated by the promotional campaign ... is justified by this debut disk loaded with exciting teen dance beats.” B-sides like “Words” and “The Girl I Knew Somewhere” were no less tuneful or hummable than their flipside counterparts. Though lyrics were generally of secondary importance, behind the novelty of Peter Tork’s frayed delivery of “Your Auntie Grizelda” lay clever internal rhyming and relevant moralizing. And the piano intro to “Daydream Believer,” played by Tork, remains one of the most memorable opening riffs ever. josephmccombs ## Reason No. 3: The Many Talents They Discovered 
Buffalo Springfield — elected to the Hall despite playing together only two years — are as much revered for the careers and projects they spawned as for the albums they released in their short lifespan, and similarly, the Monkees warrant acknowledgement for their role as a launching pad for talent. Neil Young, newly successful with Buffalo Springfield, further cut his chops as a studio musician by lending a searing guitar solo to Davy Jones’ scathing “You and I.” Jack Nicholson may have already been in films, but he added writer and producer credits to his résumé with his work on the band’s sole film, Head. And Jimi Hendrix toured with the Monkees in 1967 for a short while in his quest for American exposure post-Monterey, a famously mismatched pairing that nevertheless introduced the Experience to broader swaths of America than he could have reached without them. josephmccombs ## Reason No. 4: Their Standoff Against Don Kirshner and the Music Industry 
The artifice of the Monkees didn’t just bother critics and music purists. It bothered the boys themselves, leading to a showdown with music supervisor Don Kirshner, who had assembled the studio musicians and staff songwriters responsible for much of the first two albums. Kirshner was hired for expediency’s sake: the group had been contracted for 32 episodes, and Kirshner had access to a stable of the best songwriters. The Monkees, who were forbidden from playing the instruments on those early albums, later rejected the puppet roles they’d been assigned in what VH1 referred to as “a high-stakes musical mutiny.” Mike Nesmith threatened to quit, but Kirshner was ultimately fired instead, and the boys were given the autonomy to write and perform nearly everything on their next album, a garage-rock classic called Headquarters. josephmccombs ## Reason No. 5: Their Vital Innovations in Music Video ## Reason No. 6: Their (O.K., Not So Vital) Innovations in Music Itself 
Before the band’s emergence, there were no such branches in rock’s family tree as “bubblegum” and “sunshine pop.” The former, a sound invented in 1968 to appeal to youthful listeners while encoding adult themes for older ones, owes its livelihood to the desire to capitalize on Monkees success (in fact, “Sugar Sugar” was offered to the band years before the Archies were contrived). Lester Bangs summarized the genre thusly: “The basic bubblegum sound could be described as the basic sound of rock & roll — minus the rage, fear, violence and anomie ... Ladle on a bit of Beach Boys here and there, keep the ball rolling but let it bounce ... A calculated innocence, perhaps, but the wonderful irony was that it worked.” It did work, and the Hall should recognize this. josephmccombs ## Reason No. 7: Micky Dolenz's Lyrical Talents 
Micky Dolenz had a grand, pop-sensible malleability that allowed him to go pseudo-punk on “Steppin’ Stone,” cheese-Louise on “I’m a Believer,” breezy commentator on “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and restrained high-harmonizer on “Shades of Gray.” And he demonstrated a fine playfulness in his songwriting: 1969’s “Mommy and Daddy” was an accusatory treatise on parental responsibility from someone still seen as a teenybopper role model. The released version was startling enough in its commentary on American adults’ treatment of Native Americans, pharmaceuticals and the soldiers in Vietnam, but an unreleased take that surfaced several years later is downright seditious, with Dolenz tackling the JFK conspiracy, suicide, pill popping and careless parenting, all in under two minutes, chanting gleefully at the close, “They’re all living a lie!” josephmccombs ## Reason No. 8: They Gave Us the Movie Head 
Head is a stoner film, yes, but it’s also a rare example of artists critically examining their own roles in the entertainment–media machine. Where the Beatles giddily ran from their fans in A Hard Day’s Night, the Monkees opened their late-’68 film by running to a suicide leap off “one of the largest suspended-arch bridges in the world.” Despite the randomness of many of its images and lines, the film is definitely about something: the boys’ efforts to get out of the box they perceived themselves personally and professionally trapped in, a box made literal and crucial to the film’s most effective scene — wherein their reprised jump off the bridge at first appears liberating but soon reveals itself to have landed them back in their place, a crate being trucked off backstage along with other props. josephmccombs ## Reason No. 9: Their Central Role in Defining Authenticity in Rock 
The Monkees were fully aware of their role in the larger debates of authenticity in rock music. They knew their records were largely trash singles and continued to make them. Trash-pop singles are valid! To make a statement of inclusiveness with the Monkees can open the doors for appreciation of a broader section of the music spectrum. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame isn’t just rock 'n' roll, despite its title: it’s R&B, punk, funk, folk, blues and now, with Black Sabbath, heavy metal. Yet pop music remains a bastard child where the Hall is concerned, and it will take an artist of the Monkees’ caliber and catalog to legitimize and authenticate the genre in the Hall’s eyes. josephmccombs ## Reason No. 10: The Real Purpose of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame isn’t just about musical talent or output but also cumulative impact. Just ask the Sex Pistols! As the Hall’s own induction process declares, “Criteria include the influence and significance of the artist’s contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll.” The Monkees played a vital role in rock’s development: the careers they helped launch, the genres they helped popularize, the visual aesthetics they innovated. Had they only played one of these three roles, they’d be a historical footnote, a pleasant memory. But taken together, these purposes, along with the massive hits they had and the great records they made, show that their position in the pop-rock continuum was not an ephemeral blip but a lasting mark. josephmccombs ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7122792/the-monkees-should-be-in-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-times-10-part-treatise/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7122792/the-monkees-should-be-in-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-times-10-part-treatise/"},"headline":"Hey, Hey Let Them In: 10 Reasons The Monkees Should Be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame","datePublished":"2012-04-19T10:46:45.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T06:14:25.223Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/archive/7122792/the-monkees-should-be-in-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-times-10-part-treatise/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7122792/the-monkees-should-be-in-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-times-10-part-treatise/","name":"Hey, Hey Let Them In: 10 Reasons The Monkees Should Be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame"}}]}] ```