Produced by Joe Walsh, Old Wave was a well-put-together collection of good pop/rock songs that was all wrong for Ringo Starr. The songs required interpretive abilities simply not found in a singer of Ringo's pleasant, but limited voice and phrasing…
Ringo actually started recording his first solo album in late 1969, before the Beatles had officially split. Partially to please his parents, he set out to record an album not of rock & roll, but of standards from the 1930s and 1940s, with help from a bellyful of top arrangers (Richard Perry, Chico O'Farrill, Maurice Gibb, Klaus Voorman, George Martin, Quincy Jones, Elmer Bernstein, Oliver Nelson, and Paul McCartney)…
Within the span of five years, Ringo Starr was able to muster up seven Top Ten singles, with three of them coming from the self-titled Ringo album. Taking all of these tracks and adding three more, Blast From Your Past ends up being a worthy ten-song collection of Starr's best solo tunes…
A collection of the best performances from Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band, including 'Yellow Submarine', 'Act Naturally', 'I Wanna Be Your Man' and 'With a Little Help From My Friends'.
Just as MTV's Unplugged series started out as a great idea – get musicians to reimagine their material in stripped-down arrangements – then was reduced by the record business to a gimmick for a new kind of live album, which is to say, yet another way to re-sell the same material, VH1's Storytellers series has quickly traced the same decline…
Ringo Starr spent the 21st century working at a steady clip, touring regularly and releasing a new album every two or three years. When faced with the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, he didn't let a little thing like a global pandemic knock him off schedule. He hunkered down at his home studio and made Zoom In, an EP filled with superstar cameos and top-notch professionals, all lending their skills to a collection of breezy little tunes. Many of the names are familiar – old pal Paul McCartney shows up, as do Joe Walsh, Steve Lukather, and Nathan East – as are the vibes and themes: it's all love, peace, and good times. Ringo gives the near-title track "Zoom In Zoom Out" a contemporary spin, writing the novelty ode to telecommunications this era needed, yet most of Zoom In could've easily fit on any record he's made since Ringo 2012, if not Liverpool 8. Consistency is a virtue in this case: maybe Starr does little more than deliver what he promises, but he does deliver, and that reliability is a comfort in times of uncertainty.