The Monkees Greatest Hits
1976 compilation album by The Monkees
The Monkees Greatest Hits is a 1976 greatest hits compilation album of songs by the Monkees released by Arista Records and a reissue of an earlier Bell Records compilation, Re-Focus.
While the Monkees were among the top-selling bands of the mid-1960s, their decline was sharp, and their last new albums and singles sold poorly. Earlier greatest hits collections (the first two from their original label, Colgems Records) had seen only limited release and were hard to find in stores. (The first compilation was also called The Monkees Greatest Hits, but its track listing was very different.) Several of the Monkees' hits had become radio staples, though, and with the sale of their television series into syndication in 1975, they found a new audience on daytime TV. Popular demand from old and new Monkees fans prompted the album's release.
The cover included a photo of the group on the front and a still from the show on the back. The songs were an all-stereo mix of both hit singles and album tracks featured in the series, with the exception of "Listen to the Band" which was not featured in the original series and was first heard (in a different live version) on 1969's post-series Monkees TV special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee. (The single version of "Listen to the Band" was dubbed into a rerun episode of The Monkees during its time airing on Saturday afternoons.) Of the group's first six A-sides, only "Valleri" does not appear, although that and several successful B-sides would later show up on 1982's More Greatest Hits of the Monkees.
The album became a best-seller and remained available through the 1980s, with cassette and compact disc editions also appearing. Also, in 1981, The Best of the Monkees appeared in the UK; it had the same track lineup as Refocus and this Greatest Hits collection.
When Rhino Records reissued the entire Monkees catalog during 1995, this and all previous Monkees compilations were deleted.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Monkees Greatest Hits” as 1976 compilation album by The Monkees. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1976 compilation album by The Monkees. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7752035. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1975, 1969 and 1982.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Monkees Greatest Hits” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.