The Ringo the 4th – Ringo Starr most desperate attempts by band to sell out

There’s always been a strange curve that everyone looks at when listening to a Ringo Starr album. No one ever expected Starr to be the most successful of his former Beatle bandmates, but as long as he had some halfway decent tunes to back him up, hearing him sing along with his best mates was more than enough to keep the good times rolling whenever an album came on. But the moment he decided to be cutting edge, he fell apart when he forgot to accept that little help from his friends.

Since Ringo the 4th came out before Saturday Night Fever dropped, Starr could have been the poster child for disco and rock working together, but by shooing away any outside songwriters, the entire album feels way too ramshackle to work. ‘Drowning in the Sea of Love’ was the big single that could get people in the seats, but even then, something’s off, with Starr straining as hard as he can to reach those high notes at the end of the tune.

The rest of the album isn’t much better, either, with ‘Tango All Night’ sounding like something off a variety show and the few original tunes that Starr wrote himself making ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ sound like a stroke of musical genius. It’s far from Starr’s worst album and has some decent moments, but in terms of selling out, this is probably the closest that any Beatle came to sounding completely lost.