That Was Then, This Is Now

That Was Then, This Is Now: The Monkees' Unlikely and Triumphant Second Act

Consider the odds assembled against a successful comeback. A band formed specifically for a television series, dissolved in the early 1970s when the show's cultural moment passed and the decade's critical consensus had already decided they were a manufactured product unworthy of serious engagement. A band that had spent years as the favorite example in arguments about authenticity and commercial manipulation in the rock era. In 1986, the Monkees came back. And for a generation of children who had discovered them through syndicated reruns on afternoon television, the return felt less like a nostalgia act than genuine excitement about something they had genuinely loved.

The Reunion That Surprised Everyone

The mid-1980s had developed a meaningful appetite for 1960s nostalgia, partly driven by the generation that had grown up with the decade's sounds now reaching adulthood with disposable income and a growing interest in looking backward. MTV had, paradoxically, revived interest in the pre-MTV era by giving visual form to exactly the kind of pop personality and camera-aware charisma that the Monkees had always embodied. A generation raised on music video found the group's television footage oddly contemporary, its energy and visual wit resonating in a format they understood. Arista Records signed the Monkees for a new album, Pool It!, and the accompanying reunion tour became a commercial phenomenon; dates sold out before most people had fully processed that this was actually happening.

A Song That Understood the Moment

"That Was Then, This Is Now" was chosen as the lead single because it addressed the reunion's emotional reality directly and honestly. The lyrics acknowledge the passage of time and the distance between a shared past and a present reconnection, which was a genuinely intelligent framing of what the band's return actually meant to its audience. Rather than pretending the intervening years had not happened or simply acting as if the band were continuing where they left off, the song leaned into the gap and made the gap itself the subject. This was the kind of emotional honesty that audiences respond to, especially in the context of reunion, where the temptation to perform unchanged continuity is strong and almost always unconvincing.

Chart Validation for an Unlikely Return

The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 on July 5, 1986, at number 88. Its climb was brisk and encouraging: 68, 57, 46, 36 through consecutive July weeks, the kind of consistent upward movement that reflects genuine radio interest rather than a one-week promotional spike. The ascent continued into August. The song peaked at number 20 on August 30, 1986, completing a 14-week run on the chart that certified the reunion as commercially genuine. A top-twenty Hot 100 peak in 1986 would have been respectable for any actively recording act; for a group that had been largely absent from the commercial landscape for nearly fifteen years, it was remarkable evidence that the audience had not simply moved on.

The Question of Authenticity Revisited

The Monkees' legacy had always been tangled with the question of artistic authenticity, and the 1986 reunion offered no particular interest in relitigating those old arguments. Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork (Mike Nesmith largely declined to participate in the reunion activities) were experienced and capable entertainers who knew their catalog, understood their audience's relationship to the material, and delivered on both counts with professionalism and evident enjoyment. The critical conversations of the late 1960s about manufacturing and authenticity had less purchase in an MTV era that had made clear that visual construction and media savvy were not obstacles to genuine artistic appeal.

The Legacy of the Second Wind

The Monkees' 1986 comeback established a workable template for how legacy acts could navigate reunion in the modern pop landscape: be honest about the passage of time, give the audience the feeling of recognition and connection rather than an attempt to replicate the past exactly, and trust that genuine affection for an artist's work outlasts critical ambivalence about its origins. The tour was a significant commercial event, and the top-twenty chart performance of "That Was Then, This Is Now" remains the evidence in the archive. Play the song and let yourself understand why these four personalities captured something that the more critically respectable acts of their original era sometimes missed entirely.

“That Was Then, This Is Now” — The Monkees' singular moment on the 1980s charts.