Lots of bands were writing most of their own material in 1966 when the Monkees hit. The Beatles, Byrds, Stones, Kinks, ? And The Mysterians, The Beach Boys, Paul Revere and The Raiders, The Lovin' Spoonful. And then there were bands that didn't write most of their hits but did write some of their own material... at least as much or more than the Monkees: The Turtles, The Cyrkle, The Association come to mind. Sure, there were some bands that wrote less than 30% of their own material or didn't write at all, but there were hardly the majority... much less were they 90% of the groups active during that time.
Certainly everyone has their own take on things but I can safely say this. The Monkees wrote more songs than any other band, rock or otherwise that had a prime time comedy series that won an Emmy (or two). But in all seriousness, most acts start using other peoples songs, even the Stones and Beatles, then begin to be more involved or better at writing. As already pointed out, The Monkees had one very good songwriter, who wrote Different Drum, Mary, Mary, Girl I Knew Somewhere and Tapioca Tundra - hits before or during the Monkees. The other guys, save for a great song or two, were not as good. As far as the percentage they wrote compared to others, it would be an interesting assignment!
Yeah that was noted by someone else as well, I was speaking from a US perspective where that was not a hit or even a single. Whioe not real relevant to this topis, I don't really care for that tune myself or for any of Micky's originals they did, though he was my favorite of them as a singer.
That is interesting that I never noticed until you pointed it out, that although the Monkees for sure wrote songs, they hardly wrote ANY of their singles. Maybe 2?
Mike wrote 2 in 1969 but that was after they stopped making the top 40. None of them ever wrote a US hit for the band. I think Mike wrote a hit for himself with Joanne. Peter Tork did write one of their best known songs, as it was used over the closing credits for season 2. But never a single.
Nesmith did write two hits for the group. Both Tapioca Tundra and Girl I knew Somewhere charted on Billboard, at 34 and 39 respectively. Also, they were B sides which in some corners is even more impressive. As also pointed out Mary, Mary did hit outside the US.
Type O Negative did write some of their own material, but much of their output is over the top goth covers of pop and rock hits.
But if you look at their singles from the same period, they're by Cook and Greenaway (to be fair, Clarke gets a credit on "Long Cool Woman" as well), Albert Hammond, Judee Sill, Bruce Springsteen...
True, the Hollies wrote very few of their singles in the '70s (after writing many of the biggest ones in the 60s). Closest they got was a minor hit, "Long Dark Road." But there are lots of gems on those albums.
One of my all-time favorite bands - yeah, I admit it. Over the course of their career they did write about one album's worth of their own songs (the "Cyan" album had three of them). I compiled them on a CD and facetiously named it "All Dog Night."
Yeah, the main thing I objected to was the assertion made by someone that they were writing more of their own material than 90% of the bands out there. That's just not true. There were many groups that wrote a lot more of their own material than the Monkees did, particularly as the 60s wore on. There were also a few that wrote less, but that decreased over time. I'd say a more realistic guess would be that the Monkees wrote more of their own material than about 30% of the other bands of that era.
They'd be more apt to have been wanting to buy "More of The Monkees" for the songs Nesmith wrote that were prominently featured on their TV show than dreck like "The Day We Fall in Love", which was *never* featured on the show. And "Mary, Mary" is about as 'Country' as "Johnny B. Goode"... A lot of people act like all Nesmith wrote were Country tinged songs during The Monkees which just isn't true. "Daily Nightly" sure as **** isn't Country, nor are his songs on "The Birds, The Bess, and The Monkees" (but if hard pressed, I'd say the only one even remotely Country styled would be "Magnolia Simms", which, as I said, really isn't either). To *my ears*, he really didn't become "Country Nesmith" until 1968 with his Nashville recordings and the 1969 stuff on the albums from that year, and of course a lot of his First National Band stuff post Monkees... But that's all beside the point anyway. All I was really getting at is that a lot of people that are naysayers act like once they got rid of Don Kirshner and started doing a lot themselves that all of a sudden their sales dropped to nothing. They either don't know, or tend to forget that The Monkees still had two more #1 multi-million selling albums and one that went to # 3 and was still a gold album for them after Kirshner was ousted, and they still had top 3 hits, including one that went to # 1, plus various respectable charting B-sides. It was a gradual decline, not like all of a sudden when Donnie K. was gone the lights went out. Their decline had nothing to do with them writing songs, it had to do with waning interest in them in the latter part of 1968/early 1969.
