Ringo Starr anchored the Beatles with a smile and a thundering backbeat, qualities he'd never lose during the group's heyday and has held onto throughout his long solo career. As a drummer, his unconventional parts were a defining compositional feature of the band's sound and his laid-back charisma endeared him to fans, especially during their early days. While John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and to a lesser extent, George Harrison, served as the band's frontmen, Starr enjoyed his share of the spotlight.

Goodnight Vienna was very much a follow-up to Ringo, on which Ringo Starr called upon his bevy of musical buddies. Most prominent among them was John Lennon, who again wrote the leadoff track, "(It's All Da-Da-Down To) Goodnight Vienna," and played on three songs; also included are Elton John, who wrote and played on "Snookeroo," Dr. John, Billy Preston, Robbie Robertson, and Harry Nilsson. Richard Perry again produced, bringing his strong pop sensibility to the diverse material. The only real fall-off was in the songwriting; the album's Top Ten hits were "Only You," the old Platters song, and Hoyt Axton's novelty number "No No Song," which winked at intoxicants, but little else on the set stood out. Goodnight Vienna was another enjoyable Ringo record, but it lacked the star power and consistency of its predecessor. Still, compared to the rest of his '70s albums, it was a masterpiece.

Throughout his career, Ringo Starr has received nine Grammy® Awards and has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - first as a Beatle and then as solo artist. Now, he releases a brand-new country music album, Look Up, produced and co-written by T Bone Burnett. This stunning collection features 11 original songs, recorded this year in Nashville and Los Angeles.

Ringo Starr kicks off Give More Love, his 18th studio album of new material, with "We're on the Road Again," an ode to the working musician that effectively summarizes the third act of his career. Following the formation of the All-Starr Band, Ringo has stuck to a regular schedule of tours and albums that pop up every two or three years. Paul McCartney shows up every so often, as he does on Give More Love, singing and playing on "We're on the Road Again" – a cameo that provides a promotional hook for its initial release, but doesn't drastically change the sound of the album. Starr remains fond of late-period Beatles, goosed with a bit of arena rock volume, and since he's working with a group of well-seasoned pros, this guitar pop is all well crafted and amiable.

The Beatles never quite made a commercially released Christmas album, though they put together special singles for their fan club every year from 1963 to 1969, then compiled them as The Beatles Christmas Album, also just for the fan club, in 1970. These recordings were more spoken-word than musical, though there was a song, "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)," heard in excerpts on the 1967 record. It has been left to Ringo Starr to release the first full-length Christmas album from a Beatle, and I Wanna Be a Santa Claus is very much in the group's spirit. Since he returned to recording in 1992, Starr has made a point of making music reminiscent of the Beatles, hooking up in 1998 with a group led by Mark Hudson dubbed the Roundheads. Hudson is everywhere on I Wanna Be a Santa Claus, co-writing the half-dozen originals with Starr and others, co-producing with Starr, and handling a variety of instruments. He and keyboard player/arranger Jim Cox clearly are steeped in the Beatles, and they have effectively recreated a Beatles sound on the record, in some cases aping specific songs.

For his 2001 All-Star Band outing – his fourth captured on album – Ringo Starr is joined by fellow old-timers like bassist Greg Lake, Ian Hunter on guitars, Sheila E., Howard Jones, and Supertramp's Roger Hodgson (who contributes three songs, with the rest relegated to a single track apiece). It's an eclectic group, but all deliver fine, if predictable, readings of their biggest hits, with Sheila E.'s ten-minute version of her "Glamorous Life" a concert and album highlight.

Cut as the Beatles were disintegrating and released shortly before the group's final album, Let It Be, Ringo Starr's debut solo album was a collection of pre-rock standards dating from the 1920s to the '50s, sung over orchestral tracks arranged by everyone from fellow Beatle Paul McCartney and Bee Gee Maurice Gibb to jazz veterans Quincy Jones and Oliver Nelson. Starr brought a good-natured, nearly humorous tone to his vocals, perhaps because he wasn't trying to compete with the classic pop stylists most identified with these songs, but only to express his nostalgic affection for the material. Coming more than a decade before the fad for standards albums by rock-era pop stars like Linda Ronstadt, the album was taken not as a career move, but as a highly eccentric and expensive novelty of a kind only Beatles could afford to indulge. In retrospect, it remains harmlessly charming, if unexceptional.

Delivered during the dawning days of 2012, Ringo 2012 is a state of the union address from the beloved Beatle, a brief telegram of all the sounds and sentiments important to Richard Starkey as he begins his 72nd year. Ringo walks the line between the past and present, celebrating the former through the spectrum of the latter, producing a crisp, irrepressibly cheerful dose of nostalgia, one where he covers childhood favorites (Lonnie Donegan's skiffle classic "Rock Island Line" and Buddy Holly's "Think It Over," a version that popped up on the 2011 Holly tribute Listen to Me; "Slow Down" is not the Larry Williams tune the Beatles covered, it's an original with the same name) and revives two old album tracks from the '70s, "Step Lightly" and "Wings," choosing the latter for the record's first single…

With Ringo, Ringo Starr finally put his solo career in gear in 1973, after serving notice with back-to-back Top Ten singles in 1971 and 1972 that he had more to offer than his eccentric first two solo albums. Ringo was a big-budget pop album produced by Richard Perry and featuring Ringo's former Beatles bandmates as songwriters, singers, and instrumentalists. On no single track did all four appear, though George Harrison played the guitars on the John Lennon-penned leadoff track "I'm the Greatest," with Lennon playing piano and singing harmony. But it wasn't only the guests who made Ringo a success: Ringo advanced his own cause by co-writing two of the album's Top Ten singles, the number one "Photograph" and "Oh My My"…

Ringo Starr‘s fourth consecutive EP Crooked Boy includes four original tracks - all written and produced by Linda Perry for Starr to make his own, adding vocals and playing drums.
After previously collaborating on two songs that appeared on earlier Ringo EPs (Coming Undone on Change The World and Everyone And Everything on EP3), Linda approached Ringo and asked if she could produce an entire EP - and Crooked Boy, consisting of February Sky, Gonna Need Someone, Adeline and tht title track is the result.
“Linda made me a great EP - she produced it in her studio and then sent me the tracks and I added the drumming and my vocals,” Ringo said. “February Sky is great - very moody - but since Linda wrote these specifically for me, it of course has to have a positive peace and love element.”

Given the disappointing sales of the previous two All-Starr Band live albums, Ringo's star wasn't bright enough to get this release out on a major label or even a conventional label. As a stopgap, it was available only in Blockbuster Music stores for a brief time – at the rock-bottom bargain price of 5.99 dollars – and further volumes were not forthcoming. A shame, actually, for this was the best of the three All-Starr albums up to that point, representing what was probably Ringo's finest all-around group of the 1990s.