The Monkees form

The advert asked for "four insane guys aged 17-21". The Monkees' music was supposed to be besides the point – Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones were hired for their acting ability rather than their musicianship and didn't play on their early releases. Not that this mattered: at first because their producers hired great songwriters, later because the band turned out to be more talented than anyone expected. They certainly weren't the first manufactured pop act, but they inadvertently wrote the manufactured pop act script and played it out in public – the initial rush of fame, the accusations of flimsiness, the struggle for creative control and credibility in their own right. And the coda: that ultimately if the records are good, no one will really care who did or didn't create them.