Into The Music
Ringo Starr is 84 years old and releasing his 22nd solo album, which is either a testament to the endurance of creative ambition or a reminder that some people simply don’t stop. In his case, it seems to be both.
His solo career after the Beatles dissolved in 1970 has been remarkably inconsistent in ways that don’t diminish its highlights. “It Don’t Come Easy,” “Photograph,” “You’re Sixteen,” and the underrated Ringo album from 1973 with its extraordinary collection of collaborators (Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Marc Bolan, Harry Nilsson, Billy Preston) established him as more than a former Beatle cashing in. The commercial window closed relatively quickly, but he kept making records.
The T Bone Burnett period, which began with Look Up in 2025, represents the most critically credible phase of his later career. Burnett’s production brings rigor and authenticity that Starr’s records haven’t always had, and the country and Americana setting is a natural fit for a musician whose primary instrument is the drum kit but whose sensibilities have always been rooted in rock and roll’s American origins.
There’s something appropriate about a former Beatle making roots American music late in life. The Beatles’ entire aesthetic was built on an English band’s passionate engagement with American music they discovered from afar. Starr coming back to those roots explicitly, with T Bone Burnett as guide and Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle as collaborators, is a kind of circle closing.
Long Long Road is out April 24.
