YMMV / Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

• Epic Riff: An Enforced Trope, as producer Chip Douglas wanted a track on this album to have one because (as Michael Nesmith later quoted him) "You know what we need is a riff. We’re living in the time of the riff." Inspired by several Beatles songs ("Day Tripper", "Paperback Writer", "I Want to Tell You") and The Monkees' own "Last Train to Clarksville", Douglas composed a memorable riff that he and Nesmith agreed would work well on "Pleasant Valley Sunday". Considering that the song went to #3, they were right.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: "Hard to Believe" was a #1 hit in The Philippines.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Goin' Down" began life as a loose cover of "Parchman Farm", a 1957 song by Jazz Singer-Songwriter Mose Allison, which was itself based on older Blues songs. They jammed on the song, in particular playing around with the stop-restart device toward the end of the verse. Eventually, the band realized that they could borrow the song's chord progression but devise a new melody for it, then Diane Hildebrand, a Screen Gems-Columbia Music staff writer who'd written songs on previous Monkee albums, was called it to write lyrics. While Hildebrand's lyrics are much lighter than Allison's ("Parchman Farm" is the lament of a man in prison for murdering his wife), they still were quite edgy for a Monkee song, since they deal with an attempted suicide; however, at the end the protagonist decides not to go through with it.

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