"Circle Sky" (The Monkees)

Like a lot of people my age, I grew up watching re-runs of The Monkees T.V. show on MTV as a kid.  Great thing was, I could appreciate the show for what it was: fiction.  I didn't have all of that "are they a real band?" crap overshadowing my enjoyment of it.  I got that they were comedic actors playing musicians in a struggling garage band.  And I also got that, although they might have been miming to someone else's backing tracks most of the time, each individual had musical talent.

Honestly, I've never understood the whole backlash against The Monkees.  Maybe that's because I grew up in an era where every cartoon character on Saturday morning T.V. had its own album, merchandising, and branding out the wazoo.  (I mean, you don't have to be in Mensa to grasp that "Papa Smurf" wasn't playing guitar on The Smurfs' album.)

Anyway, if you've never seen the movie Head (1968), it's worth watching.  The absurdist film by The Monkees creator Bob Rafelson and a young Jack Nicholson basically takes the whole concept of the T.V. show and puts a stick of dynamite in its mouth.  In short, the movie not only admits that the band is manufactured, but it also points out that everything else in pop culture is fake, too.  It's all a matter of how much of the lie you want to believe or buck.

In any case, the film has a damn good soundtrack that avoids any bubblegum filler.  Even the softer/sunnier fare has teeth.  (For example, the late Davy Jones sings the Harry Nilsson-penned "Daddy's Song," which is a poignant song about a man abandoning his family, disguised as an upbeat dancehall number.)

My favorite track, though, is Mike Nesmith's own composition "Circle Sky," an electric guitar-driven scorcher.  (It might even be the first, real instance of alt-country on record.)  Taking a glance at the lyrics, it's obvious the song is about The Monkees' career.  Using an economy of words, Nesmith paints a picture of studio executives calling the shots and the band having to sell the lie, over and over again.  At the same time, Papa Nez is asking listeners to suspend disbelief and simply appreciate the music.

Or as he told teen mag Flip back in December 1968, "It seems like we've gone full circle back to the beginning.  But I ain't standing for it.  I mean, I'm moving on.  I'm going to see what other career can happen."

"Randy Scouse Git [Alternate Title]" (The Monkees)

The track "Randy Scouse Git (Alternate Title)" from the album Headquarters (1967) is kind of significant for a number of reasons.
First of all, this song represents one of the first instances of all four Monkees being allowed to play their own instruments on a recording.  (Specifically: Micky Dolenz sings lead and plays drums/tympani, Davy Jones performs backing vocals, Mike Nesmith plays guitar, and Peter Tork plays piano/organ.  Their producer, Chip Douglas, plays bass.) 
Prior to Headquarters, the group's record label had forced them to record exclusively with session musicians.  Label execs had purposely left the group out of the creative and songwriting processes, ostensibly to allow them to focus on acting in their NBC sitcom. The label's stance was that The Monkees were just actors being paid to play musicians; however, The Monkees felt they were artists, first and foremost, and had a responsibility to fans and themselves to not just mime their songs.  Ultimately, The Monkees won the battle.
Secondly, the song is one of the few instances of a Monkees hit single that actually was written by a Monkee: in this case, Dolenz.
Lyrically, it's about The Beatles (the four kings of EMI) throwing a "welcome to England" party for The Monkees in early 1967.  On each verse, Dolenz recounts the festive atmosphere in a stream of consciousness sort of way.  But then, the chorus purposely breaks from the narrative and provides a burst of confrontational chaos in the midst of the merriment.  It's a blunt jab at the killjoy establishment, touching on hot-button topics of the time from the Vietnam War to longer hair.
The odd title of the song is unrelated to either topic, though.  While The Monkees were touring England, Dolenz happened to see a TV program called Till Death Do Us Part—a Britcom that centered around a grouchy, bluntly racist, blue collar patriarch who often butted heads with members of his family—particularly his progressive, strong-willed son-in-law.  (The show eventually was adapted for US TV by Norman Lear as All in the Family.)  One of the patriarch's common retorts to the son-in-law was the phrase, "Randy Scouse git!"
Dolenz thought it was a funny line and felt it might make for a catchy title for his new song.  He didn't realize, however, that it was slang for "horny Liverpudlian bastard"—"git" being a shortened version of the word "illegitimate."  When the band's label notified Dolenz that it was potentially offensive to Brits, it was irreverently retitled "Alternate Title" for the UK market.
Most of all, though, it's just a great, innovative pop song.  At the time, few mainstream artists (apart from The Beatles and Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys) were writing songs with shifting dynamics or stop-start structures.  But here, Dolenz throws convention out the window, opening the song with a tympani solo that suddenly gives way to mock 1920s dancehall music before erupting into a cacophony of pounding drums and shouted vocals.  The moment it all seems ready to careen out of control, everything halts and retreats to the lighthearted flapper motif, starting the cycle all over again.
(And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Dolenz's damn fine scat singing on the third verse.)
All this from a guy and a band who supposedly weren't real musicians.

"Saturday's Child" (The Monkees)

I’ve said it before: for my money, you can’t ask for a more distinctive rock vocalist than Micky Dolenz, and one of my favorite Dolenz-fronted tracks is “Saturday's Child”--a cut from the group’s 1966 debut album that was featured in two episodes of the TV show (“Monkee vs. Machine” [9/26/66] and “The Spy Who Came in from the Cool” [10/10/66]) but was never released as a single.  Shame, because it’s one of their more rocking songs.

In fact, it’s the only song on the debut album that really makes them sound like the garage rock band that the TV show made them out to be.  

The song prominently features a distorted guitar riff, very similar to the gritty sound The Beatles had captured on Revolver earlier that summer.  But like so many of their songs released before their 1967 album Headquarters (when they gained a little more control over their output and finally were allowed to play their own instruments on their records), Dolenz is the only Monkee on the track.  Session musicians performed the entire backing track, including that fantastic riff.

"Pleasant Valley Sunday" (The Monkees)

Call The Monkees the "Pre-fab Four" if you will.  But, in my opinion, Micky Dolenz is one of the best, most instantly-recognizable voices in all of rock and roll, and "Pleasant Valley Sunday" is an excellent Carole King-Gerry Goffin composition.
I've thought so ever since MTV resurrected re-runs of The Monkees sitcom in the late 80s and introduced my generation to the music. 
In short, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" is a commentary on post-World War II American suburbia, where everyone looks the same, sounds the same, has first-world problems, and is happy to wallow in their collective ignorance of the real outside world.  In the bridge of the song, the lyrics lament how "creature comfort goals / they only numb my soul," and expresses a need for a change of point of view.
Now, compared to what The Beatles or Jimi Hendrix were doing in 1967, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" is tame stuff.  (Although, there are nods to psychedelia--like the reverb-thick, echoey ending of the song, where producer Chip Douglas and recording engineer Hank Cicalo basically just started cranking every knob on the console to "11" to create the murky effect.)  But for as poppy as the song is musically, the subject matter of the song is pretty subversive.  It actually bites the very hand that fed The Monkees--i.e. suburbanite kids and their parents who were keeping the band's weekly TV show on the air and buying the band's records.  It also signals the shift in their identity and mentality: they were a band with something to say and not just puppets for NBC and Colgems.  
And, yes, by 1967 they were a band.  The four had wrested a fair amount of control over their output from the studio honchos, and not only were they writing some of their own material, but they also finally were allowed to play on their own records.  (Mike Nesmith plays that indelible lead guitar lick, and Peter Tork plays electric piano on the track, too.)    
It's a great vocal from Dolenz, a great groove, but--in it's own small way--it's also trying to say something about our society.  And that makes it a perennial favorite of mine.