Were the Monkees really the first manufactured boyband ?
Yes, but the members of the band had no say in it. The Monkees was supposed to be a television sitcom about a band, and so there had to be music that their characters would appear to be playing. It was fine at first until their evil manager (no lie) Donnie Kirshner started selling the songs on the show on records, and it upset the band members that they were being given credit for music they did not perform, only sang vocals on. So people started criticizing them for being fake, when truly they just hadn’t planned on having records sold in their name. So the only thing they could do was to actually become musicians so that they wouldn’t unjustly be credited for other people’s work. And they certainly proved themselves as musicians by the time their album Headquarters was released, the music on their records was actually truly their own. I think they were great musicians with talent, and I admire that they rebelled against the powers that be to prove that they had it.
