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\n\tThanks to The Monkees\u2018 abundant catalog, Micky Dolenz never faces a shortage of music to perform. But he\u2019s always happy to have new songs, too \u2014 hence the arrival of a new EP, Timeless<\/em>, on Sept. 4.<\/p>\n\n
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\n \t\t\t\t\tMicky Dolenz As the Last Monkee Standing: \u2018It\u2019s Time to Take Off the Black Armband and Just Celebrate\u2019\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n
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\n \t\t\t\t\tLooking Ahead: A Release Calendar of Upcoming Albums\u00a0in\u00a02026\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n
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\n \t\t\t\t\tYuridia Makes History at Estadio GNP Seguros: \u2018Women Sell Tickets Too\u2019\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n
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\n\t\u201cWell, I guess somebody just wanted to keep recording me \u2014 there\u2019s no accounting to taste,\u201d the 81-year-old singer, actor, writer and director quips to Billboard<\/em> from a residence he keeps in eastern Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n\n\tBut not monkeying around, Dolenz \u2014 the last living member of The Monkees \u2014 explains, \u201cThat\u2019s how I\u2019ve been recording as a solo artist for decades now; somebody comes to me and says, \u2018Do you want to record something, some new stuff?\u2019 I\u2019ve always gone on gut instinct; I know I\u2019m not going to be selling Platinum, but if the songs are there and they hit me as something that would be good to sing, then the answer is yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tFor the six-track Timeless<\/em>, the person approaching Dolenz was John Hughes, a former Rhino Records executive who had worked with The Monkees on the group\u2019s lauded 2016 album Good Times! <\/em>Now leading his own company, Near Mint Music, Hughes took a similar tract for the new EP, soliciting songs for Dolenz from formidable corps of artists \u2014 including Good Times!<\/em> alumni such as XTC\u2019s Andy Partridge and the late Adam Schlesinger, along with The Replacements Paul Westerberg (who wrote Timeless<\/em>\u2018 first single, \u201cTerri\u201d), the Bangles\u2019 Vicki Peterson, Sam Hollander, Shelby Lynn and Pete Donnelly and Jonny Polonsky.<\/p>\n\n
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\n\t\u201cIt was almost like, \u2018Let\u2019s get the band back together!’\u201d Hughes tells Billboard<\/em>. \u201cSam Hollander just went out to all of our songwriter friends and said, \u2018Who wants to write something for Micky Dolenz?\u2019 And universally it was, \u2018Oh, yeah, we love Micky!\u2019 No one turned us down, not one person. Some said, \u2018Hey, we don\u2019t have time right now. Can we do the next one?\u2019 But nobody said no.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tPeterson, who penned the Mersey-flavored second single, \u201cWaiting for the Day,\u201d which features Dolenz\u2019s younger sister and touring band member Coco, shares that \u201cit\u2019s a huge joy for me\u201d to have the song on the EP.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201c[Hollander] called and said, \u2018Do you have anything that\u2019s kind of \u201960s pop, and [\u2018Waiting for the Day\u2019] immediately came to the front of my brain,\u201d recalls Peterson, who had written it as a kind of takeoff on the Cowsills. (She\u2019s married to John Cowsill.) \u201cI said, \u2018I have a song that should have come out in 1968,\u2019 and [Hollander] said, \u2018That\u2019s what I\u2019m talking about!\u2019 So I sent it to him, and luckily for me, Micky liked it and they recorded it. I was a Monkees fan as a kid, and we\u2019ve known Micky for a number of years, sort of casually, so this means a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tA meaningful track for all concerned, meanwhile, is the bouncy, nostalgic pop tune \u201cSomething Happened,\u201d which was cowritten by Hollander and Schlesinger before the latter died in 2020 early during the COVID-19 pandemic. Schlesinger was deeply involved with Good Times!<\/em>, writing and producing two tracks Dolenz sang; Hughes says \u201cSomething Happened\u201d was also submitted back then, but Schlesinger ultimately didn\u2019t feel it was right for the album at the time.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cWe thought that because Adam was such an important part of Good Times!<\/em> and [2018\u2019s] Christmas Party<\/em>, we had to have him involved in [Timeless<\/em>] some way,\u201d Hughes says. \u201cAdam liked the song; he just didn\u2019t like it on Good Times! <\/em>So when we started [Timeless<\/em>], I went digging through the archives and found \u2018Something Happens\u2019 and went to Sam and said, \u2018Well, he can\u2019t object now \u2026’\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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\n\tDolenz, according to Hughes, was happy to have the track, but felt \u201cit was a little to on-the-nose, lyrically, about Monkees history,\u201d and asked Hollander to tweak the lyrics to make it \u201cmore universal.\u201d Nevertheless, lines such as \u201cWipe your tears\/ dry your eyes\/ but we\u2019ll never ever say goodbye\/ Funny how time slips by\u201d come off as poignant in the wake of Schlesinger\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHe is so sorely missed,\u201d Dolenz says of Schlesinger. \u201cWhat a great talent, you know?\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tHe demurs, however, when asked to identify what specifically spoke to him about Timeless<\/em>\u2018 six songs.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cY\u2019know, I can\u2019t reduce it in any scientific sense,\u201d he explains. \u201cI can\u2019t say, \u2018Ooh, it\u2019s that G6 chord in the fifth bar of the second verse\u2019 or anything like that. If there was a formula, there\u2019d never be flops, right? But you just look at it and go, \u2018That\u2019s good. Let\u2019s do it.\u2019 Bob Rafelson, who created The Monkees, called it lightning in a bottle, and to some degree that\u2019s how I look at this business \u2014 and have, forever. I think what happens is you put together certain people \u2014 certain writers, certain musicians, certain singers \u2014 and you catch that lightning, like he says. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. I don\u2019t dissect it any more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tTimeless<\/em> is Dolenz\u2019s third release of the decade, following 2023\u2019s Dolenz Sings R.E.M. <\/em>and 2021\u2019s Dolenz Sings Nesmith<\/em>, and first solo set of original material since Remember<\/em> in 2012. It comes as he\u2019s in the midst of commemorating the 60th anniversary of The Monkees<\/em> television show and of the group\u2019s self-titled debut album, which came out a month later in October 1966, hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and spawned the hits \u201cLast Train to Clarksville,\u201d \u201c(Theme From) The Monkees\u201d and \u201cI Wanna Be Free.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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\n\t\u201cTimeless<\/em> refers to the 60 years of The Monkees, of course, but also the idea was these songs would have that kind of timeless feel to them and hopefully not date,\u201d Dolenz explains. \u201cThe stuff from the \u201960s, that jangly guitar stuff especially, hasn\u2019t dated that much. People are coming back around to it all the time, obviously The Beatles being the keystone to much of that. In my mind it always comes down to the material; it did with The Monkees, and that\u2019s what I look for when I do my own things now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tDolenz returns to the road with his 60 Years of the Monkees show on Sept. 8-9 at the Music Instruments Museum in Phoenix, and has dates scheduled into May of 2027, followed by a Sept. 12 performance at the United Theater on Broadway in Los Angeles on the exact 60th anniversary of the first episode of The Monkees <\/em>airing on NBC. Next year will commemorate the year (1967) that the group put four albums at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won a pair of Emmys. \u201cWe have the show pretty well locked in at this point,\u201d Dolenz says. \u201cI talk a lot about The Monkees, the genesis of it, the origin, how it all happened. I don\u2019t go on and on for hours, but I tell stories and we have videos. Sometimes some friends pop in for a song or two. It\u2019s a great way to keep it out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tAnd, Dolenz adds, he\u2019s happy to maintain the memories of his late bandmates Davy Jones, who passed away in 2012, Peter Tork in 2019 and Michael Nesmith in 2021. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like they\u2019ve never left \u2019cause I\u2019m with them every night,\u201d Dolenz says. \u201cI\u2019m seeing them on the screen. I\u2019m hearing them. People talk about it all the time. The thing I miss the most is just not being able to call somebody and just say hi. We were really like brothers, ultimately \u2026 And, like brothers, we fought sometimes, but you can\u2019t go through something like we did and not be that close to one another.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/music\/rock\/micky-dolenz-timeless-ep-refers-to-the-monkees-60-years-1236331756\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/micky-dolenz-cr-dis-company-billboard-1800.jpg?w=1024″] Trending on Billboard Thanks to The Monkees\u2018 abundant catalog, Micky Dolenz never faces a shortage of music to perform. But he\u2019s always happy to have new songs, too \u2014 hence the arrival of a new EP, Timeless, on Sept. 4. Related Micky Dolenz As the Last Monkee Standing: \u2018It\u2019s Time to Take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2126710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2126710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2126710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2126710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2126710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Micky](\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Micky-Dolenz-2025-credit-dis-COMPANY-billboard-1800.jpg?w=237&h=147&crop=1\")
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