11 January 1968
Is Monkees-snark even a thing any more? Anyway, not that I particularly care but just if any elderly male white rock fans are reading, apparently the piano on this single is indeed played by Peter and the guitar by Mike, meaning more Monkees played instruments on ‘Daydream Believer’ than Byrds did on ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ or Beach Boys on ‘God Only Knows’.
Also from the rockist rap-sheet: the family-friendly sentimentality of ‘Daydream Believer’ may seem gauche as we enter the mythologised 1968 of student protest and social unrest. However, it’s also the year the equally-mythologised new Beatles album contains ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’, ‘Blackbird’, ‘Rocky Raccoon’, ‘I Will’, ‘Honey Pie’, ‘Mother Nature’s Son’ and ‘Martha My Dear’, a suite of Paul songs that double down on the folksy naffness of ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ and give off the same sickly sweetness as the sugary prepped-tomato smell wafting out of Subway. ‘Daydream Believer’ here is a bellwether of the bubblegum pop coming to clog up our late-’60s and early-’70s number one spot. Three decades later, U2 in their try-hard irony phase even performed it as karaoke on the PopMart tour, including with Davy Jones himself.
So yes, there’s the aw-shucks schmaltziness of a daydream believer and a homecoming queen, plus Davy playing the stage English moptop for US audiences by leaning into his Mancunian accent (“Me shavin’ razor’s cold”). Still, there’s a lot in ‘Daydream Believer’ to like. That humungous big-singalong chorus is enjoyably catchy; if you’ve read this far then you’ve already sung it to yourself at least once. The down-home drudge of its alarm clock, shavin’ razor and dollar-one-to-spend can’t quite dull that sunny piano intro and wistful opening couplet. And the whole thing is infused with the breezy charm of its West Coast sound and likeable stars. No wonder U2 tried to leech some pop fun and energy off it.
