More of the Monkees output, since this album and their debut, "The Monkees", featured them limited to just vocals with scattered instrumental contributions. Kirshner had a strict rule that the Monkees were to provide only vocals on his productions, though separate sessions produced by Michael Nesmith himself usually featured Peter Tork on guitar. "More of the Monkees" has Nesmith limited to one song as lead vocalist. Within weeks of the release of "More of the Monkees", Nesmith lobbied successfully with the group's creators, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, for the Monkees to be allowed to play their instruments on future records, effectively giving the
The Monkees the Monkees. Nesmith stated, "One of the things that I really felt was honest was country-rock. I wanted to move the Monkees more into that because ... if we get closer to country music, we'll get closer to blues, and country blues, and so forth. ... It had a lot of un-country things in it: a familiar change from a I major to a VI minor—those kinds of things. So it was a little kind of a new wave country song. It didn't sound like the country songs of the time, which was Buck Owens." Their next single, "Daydream Believer"