Dolly Parton #51: Run, Rose, Run (2022)

Not content to simply have conquered the worlds of music, film, philanthropy, and theme park attractions, Dolly Parton set her sights on the literary world in 2022, teaming with mega-bestselling author James Patterson to write Run, Rose, Run, the story of a young woman fleeing her dark past with dreams of country music success. After so many years of putting books in the hands of needy children, writing one of her own probably seemed like a logical next step, even if the resulting book doesn’t sound all that kid-friendly. To go along with her first foray as a novelist, Dolly also turned out something more in her wheelhouse: a companion album. Thus, Run, Rose, Run is a multimedia project of sorts, with a film adaptation apparently in the works.

I’ve not read the book, but it’s not hard to glean a rough narrative from the album alone. After the opening song “Run” serving as a sort of prologue, the titular character sets out for Nashville on “Big Dreams and Faded Jeans,” tries to avoid the pitfalls of opportunists and conmen on “Snakes in the Grass,” finds love and recovers from heartbreak on “Demons,” “Lost and Found” and “Dark Night, Bright Future.” There’s also some more general character kind of songs like “Driven” (about being, well, driven) or “Firecracker” (about being feisty and not some passive flower), and a few songs that don’t really fit into the story but are maybe meant to be songs written or performed by Rose? Having not read the book, I can’t be totally sure, but even without the narrative, it works as a pretty straightforward Dolly album, with plenty of her favorite themes and styles.

Musically, Run, Rose, Run matches its Nashville setting with an array of classic country sounds, from swaggering honky-tonk on “Woman Up (and Take it Like a Man)” to stomping acoustic blues on “Snakes in the Grass” to several full-steam-ahead bluegrass barnstormers like “Firecracker” or “Dark Night, Bright Future.” It’s an approach that mostly looks backwards, which is a good thing, because its story feels archetypal in a lot of ways. Setting these in a more radio-country kind of milieu wouldn’t work nearly as well.

It’s on the ballads that the album sometimes stumbles, with a couple tracks feeling like they stepped straight out of the early 90s moment when country and so-called “adult contemporary” started to fuse together, something Dolly herself is no doubt well acquainted with. “Secrets” has a very 90s sheen, with some chiming synths and a sort of quasi-R&B slow burn rhythm. The final track “Love or Lust,” a duet with Dolly’s longtime collaborator Richard Dennison, has a sort of musical theatre feel that can’t help but come off as corny. “Demons” does a little better, with a more dreamy, country sound and a vocal assist from Ben Haggard, Merle’s youngest son, along with a more complex lyric about two people struggling to see through their own problems to be able to help each other.

Despite these slight missteps, Run, Rose, Run is a pretty solid Dolly Parton album, probably her most satisfying since Blue Smoke nearly a decade prior. It’s cozily in Dolly’s wheelhouse, trafficking in the kind of stuff that she could probably do in her sleep at this point, but it contains a few moments of brilliance that rank among her best songs in years. Easily the highlight comes at the album’s midpoint on “Blue Bonnet Breeze,” an outlier and a sort of “story within a story” in the narrative.

As gently twinkling chimes give way to droning fiddle and waltz-time acoustic guitar strums, Dolly spins a tragic yarn in a sweet, beguiling melody about two young lovers from different economic backgrounds who run off together, only to end up dead for their trouble. It feels like a song that could’ve been written hundreds of years ago, despite its more modern trappings, and easily the kind of song Dolly herself probably could have written during her much sadder early 70s period. The star-crossed lovers story is as ancient as stories themselves, and while Dolly doesn’t exactly find a new spin on it, the song is so enchanting that it hardly matters. It fades out with wordless vocals from Dolly before leaving us with those twinkling chimes, gently swaying in the titular breeze.

“Blue Bonnet Breeze” is a standout track, but the rest of the album delivers the Dolly goods too. After a couple excursions into children’s music and Christmas music, it’s nice to get another collection of Dolly doing what she does best, and making it look so darn effortless. No need to worry if you haven’t read the book; you’ll still be able to follow along.

Dolly Parton #46: Better Day (2011)

As the 2000s turned into the 2010s, America was locked in a perpetual state of anxiety. A war overseas had dragged on for nearly a decade, a housing market crash and subsequent recession left many out of work and unable to stay afloat, while the Wall Street bros who caused the whole thing got a massive bailout just to keep the economy from completely tanking. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 brought with it a wave of hope for change, but also brought just as much backlash, much of it racially motivated. Not to mention the steadily mounting threat of climate change that we were even further away from taking seriously. Suffice it to say, it was hard to feel very good about the way things were going.

So leave it to Dolly Parton, pop culture’s eternal optimist, to try to lift our spirits through her chosen medium of song. Dolly said her specific aim with Better Day was to make people feel better, to give us a little hope amid the economic and geopolitical gloom, to remind us that if we keep pushing, keep trying, keep hoping, good times may be around the corner. Dolly’s optimism isn’t exactly naive or wrongheaded. She’s seen tough times before, written plenty of songs with plenty of suffering, but her faith and her belief in the goodness of people has seen her through. Sometimes, choosing to see the good can be a radical act.

Better Day is Dolly’s first album in quite a while to be made up of all originals, though that doesn’t mean the songs are all brand new. Four of them, “I Just Might,” “Get Out and Stay Out,” “Shine Like the Sun,” and “Let Love Grow” were all repurposed from her score for the 9 to 5 musical from a couple years prior, and lead single “Together You and I” dates back to her Porter Wagoner days. It all added up to a decent success, making it to #51 on the Billboard albums chart and #11 country and getting good reviews. It seems that Dolly wasn’t wrong in thinking people might like a little dose of uplift.

She kicks it off by offering some much-needed perspective on “In the Meantime,” reminding us that people have been forseeing doom since the very beginning, and there’s something about the human condition that makes us always think the world’s going to end. But until that happens, we have a choice to aim ourselves towards the good, to try and do right with the time we have, however much time that is. In the decade-plus since this album was released, that feeling of doom has only increased, and it’s important to remember that our generation isn’t the first to feel this way.

Most of the uplift on Better Day is of the more personal variety, with characters choosing to do whatever it takes to improve their lot in life. “Just Leavin'” is a classic Dolly track where the narrator decides to leave an unsupportive partnership in order to strike out on their own; even if that means uncertainty and doubt, it’s better than where they’re at now. “The Sacrifice” feels like a more personal song, where Dolly songs about everything left behind in the pursuit of success. I kept waiting for a turn at the end of the song, that Dolly’s character would realize all that sacrifice wasn’t worth it in the end, but that’s not really what we get. There’s a brief moment of doubt, but it’s quickly cast aside. Is the narrator in denial, or are we to believe it really was worth it? I’m not sure, but it makes for a more interesting song.

The four tracks from 9 to 5 definitely betray their more conversational, musical theatre roots, and their optimism is a little more guarded. “I Just Might” leaves room for doubt that its narrator can truly make it, and “Get Out and Stay Out” is the kind of kiss-off song that Dolly can nail in her sleep. The other two, “Shine Like the Sun” and “Let Love Grow,” are a bit more indistinct, generic uplift anthems that are transformed here into radio-friendly glossy pop.

In general, the album is split between sounds that would have felt right at home on early 2010s country radio and more traditional sounds. The pop-centric stuff doesn’t do much for me, with its “regular pop with pedal steel” kind of vibe, all shimmery electric guitars and steady rhythms. It feels a bit like Dolly trying to bend her style to the popular trends, rather than the other way around (aka the correct way). I’m much more into the traditional style, which Dolly has always pulled off so well. “Country Is As Country Does,” a Mac Davis co-write, is some classic high-stepping country with all the fixin’s, perfectly matched to its theme of pride of place. The title track is one of the album’s best, beginning with bluesy piano and a spoken-word intro before the dobro and shuffling drums kick in, backing Dolly’s sultry vocal with a lazy, easygoing rhythm.

Dolly’s aim with Better Day was to offer a ray of home through the gloom, and wouldn’t you know it, I did feel a little better by the time it was over. The America of 2023 is still a pretty scary place, possibly even more so than 2011, with mounting crises and a frightening tilt towards Nationalism and bigotry. A song can’t save the world, but it can make things just a bit less frightening, at least for a few minutes. There are plenty worse things a star like Dolly could do, that’s for sure.

Dolly Parton #24: Heartbreak Express (1982)

In 1981, Dolly Parton did the unthinkable: she didn’t release a new album for the entire calendar year, for the first time in her career. Though from the sounds of it, she had some pretty good reasons. Dolly’s been very open about the fact that, post 9 to 5, her mental and physical health took a sharp decline. She began to have digestive and gynecological ailments, taking medication to help with said ailments which, along with her relentless schedule of recording and budding Hollywood career, all contributed to a really dark time in the singer’s life. It’s hard to imagine someone as relentlessly upbeat as Dolly Parton suffering from depression, but it seems like that’s exactly what was happening. I can only imagine that the supposedly contentious production of her cinematic follow-up The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas only added to the emotional and physical stress she was dealing with.

Looked at through this lens, the return to form of Heartbreak Express makes sense. After conquering country and pop and dipping her toe in the Hollywood pool, experiencing both the ups and downs of that particular industry, it’s not surprising that Dolly would want to return to her roots. As such, Heartbreak Express is the first album in many years to feature a majority of songs written by Dolly, and has a noticeably more pronounced rootsy feel than her past few forays into country/pop fusion. It’s not exactly stripped down, as it’s still a high-gloss studio production, but it ditches a lot of the pop affectations and songwriters-for-hire of her recent efforts. To my mind, it’s all the better for it.

The album kicks off in fine fashion with the title track, a top-10 country single with a strutting R&B/country rhythm. One of Dolly’s classic tales of wounded ex-lovers, it’s bolstered by some dirty sax and Terry McMillan’s pealing harmonica, mimicking the titular train’s whistle. It announces right out of the gate that this is a Dolly we haven’t heard from in a while. It continues with the swaying barroom lament “Single Women,” a portrait of the lonely souls hitting the bars, yearning for connection. Written by, of all people, comedy legend and first SNL head writer Michael O’Donoghue, who I would say pretty much nails it in the country songwriting department, it finds Dolly not personifying one of these women, but looking at them with a sad, sympathetic remove. She doesn’t play it as anything but sincere, and O’Donoghue’s lyrics don’t really seem to be aiming for humor either. Between writer and singer, they manage to conjure a bruised dignity in their subjects, showing us how the promise of connection at night turns to disappointment the next morning. I’m not sure if O’Donoghue wrote any more country songs, but he clearly has a knack for it.

Heartbreak Express mostly stays in a rootsy, countrified R&B lane, trading chugging country numbers like “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” with big bombastic soul workouts like “Act Like a Fool,” with its funky syncopation and dramatic horns and backing vocals, sounding for all the world like something Aretha Franklin might have put to tape. Dolly manages to sound soulful not by imitating Black soul singers like Franklin, but by bringing her own vulnerability and emotional intensity to the songs, proving that “soul” goes beyond style and into something deeper. Dolly doesn’t really strike me as the type of artist that puts a lot of her personal feelings into her music, though it is certainly possible that some of the emotional and physical pain she was dealing with informed her performances.

That’s certainly evident in a song like the closing track “Hollywood Potters,” which takes direct aim at the exploitative Hollywood system that chews up vulnerable young talent and spits it back out when it has no use for it anymore. Beginning with an a capella recitation conjuring old Southern spirituals, Dolly implores “Mothers hold onto your sons and your daughters / should Hollywood claim them, you’ll hold them no more.” It quickly launches into a big dramatic bit of gospel complete with stirring backing vocals and booming drums, conjuring enough force to feel like it can take on Hollywood itself. Dolly has explained to interviewers that she was inspired to write the song by watching some of the bit players in 9 to 5 who had struggled mightily to make it in the Hollywood system, and I can’t help but wonder if her less than stellar experience making Whorehouse might have informed her vitriol somewhat as well. By all accounts, making 9 to 5 was a generally positive experience, but leave it to Dolly to use her time in the spotlight to shine a light on the plight of the little guy.

Heartbreak Express is a stellar album that feels like a real return to form for Dolly. While her pop work was generally very good and had a lot of bright spots, it’s nice to hear her going back to the tried-and-true, and contributing more of her own songs. The fact that, in the midst of the most trying and difficult time in her life, Dolly could still turn out an album like this is a testament to her craft and her work ethic. Long-term Hollywood success might not have been in the cards for her, but the truth is that Dolly never really needed Hollywood anyway. Heartbreak Express is a wonderful reminder that she’s a talent that cannot be denied.

Dolly Parton #8: Coat of Many Colors (1971)

Dolly Parton just couldn’t be stopped.

Six months after dropping Joshua, Dolly was back with her third album of 1971, Coat of Many Colors. Not only was she insanely prolific at this time, but the country record buying public was still receptive to her charms; it didn’t quite do as well as Joshua, but it came pretty darn close, making it to #7 on the country album charts and its title track getting as high as #4 on the singles charts. Even more than that, Coat of Many Colors is considered one of Dolly’s finest albums, earning retrospective raves and making it onto more than one “greatest albums of all time” lists. But is it worth all that praise?

Well, I don’t know, but it’s pretty darn good anyway. It’s an overall brighter album than some of her recent work, though with that comes a loss of some of the specificity that makes her best songs such strong pieces of songwriting. She starts off on the right foot with the title track, which has come to be considered one of her best and most enduring songs (Dolly herself considers it a favorite), a timeless ode to being poor in money but rich in spirit. Inspired by Dolly’s impoverished upbringing, her narrator reflects on her childhood and the coat her mother made for her out of a box of old rags. Relating to the biblical tale of Joseph’s multicolored coat, the narrator is extremely proud of her coat and can’t wait to show it off, only to face ridicule from her classmates. It speaks to the innocence of youth and the power of perspective; where other kids see a ratty coat made of rags, Dolly sees something beautiful and made with love.

Elsewhere, Dolly moves fluidly between classic midcentury country, Appalachian folk-pop, and groove-heavy country/soul with ease. “Traveling Man,” another beloved song, is a driving country blues with a prominent, slightly funky bassline, as Dolly does a sort of spoken-word quasi-rap, telling the tale of a wayward lover who ends up absconding with the narrator’s mother. It’s a funny twist that stands in sharp contrast to the motherly love on the opening track. “My Blue Tears,” the album’s first single and another gem, feels more reminiscent of Carter Family-esque early country/folk, as the guitar follows the vocal melody and Dolly does close harmony with herself, a trick she pulled on Joshua’s “Letter to Heaven.”

Dolly wrote most of the tunes herself along with three penned by her boss Porter Wagoner, which all fall into the classic country sounds that both of them were known for, with slow and steady rhythms and softly floating pedal steel (this time supplied by Pete Drake instead of Lloyd Green). “If I Lose My Mind” feels like a sequel to some of Dolly’s heartbroken breakup ballads, with a narrator coming home to her mama after being mistreated by a man. “The Mystery of the Mystery” speaks to those things that we as humans just weren’t meant to know about the universe, leaving it in the hands of the Creator to know what it all means. “The Way I See You” finds Dolly singing with quiet, slowly building awe about a partner, gently blown away by their beauty and her love.

I’m always a fan any time Dolly switches things up musically, and she does that in a few cool ways on this album. One of my favorites is “Early Morning Breeze,” a chilled-out, slightly spacey track that almost verges on psych-folk, built mostly on a bass line and Dolly’s interesting vocal melody before soft guitar and drums fade in, coalescing into a strutting groove for a moment before floating away again. Its vibe matches the lyrics, chock full of pastoral imagery and Dolly just enjoying the subtle beauty of nature. “Here I Am” has a sort of gospel/country feel, as Dolly belts over backing vocals on the triumphant chorus, offering her services for love and affection in a no-pressure kind of way. The final track “A Better Place to Live” is a fairly generic plea for peace and understanding that is bolstered by its shifting rhythm, which starts out steady before going syncopated on the chorus and back again.

A lot of the songs on Coat of Many Colors take a more universal approach, speaking to bigger emotions that end up taking away some of the specificity and edge of Dolly’s most memorable songs. One exception would be “She Never Met a Man (She Didn’t Like),” where Dolly’s narrator tries to warn her lover off of leaving her for a particular woman who will in all likelihood grow tired of him before too long and move on to somebody else. Her tone is more sad resignation, she knows she probably can’t stop it from happening, but tries her best to keep him from screwing them both over for something that probably won’t last long anyway. It has the emotional complexity and ambiguity of Dolly’s best compositions. One problem with aiming for broad appeal is that most people don’t want to listen to dark, tragic story songs too often.

Still, Coat of Many Colors is a pretty terrific album with more hits than misses, and includes a few stone-cold classics. Its title track has remained an enduring classic for good reason, its message of gratitude and not listening to the haters continuing to resonate, so much so that they made a whole made-for-TV movie out of it back in 2015. While Dolly may be far from the poverty that the coat represents, it seems like she’s never forgotten to be grateful and choose to see the good in things.

Beatles Solo Albums BONUS: Zoom In & Change the World EPs (2021)

Because apparently 69 albums just wasn’t enough solo Beatles content for yours truly, I thought I’d do a sort of coda, if you will, and write about the most recent music released by a former Beatle. Sir Paul may have released the last full album, but his fellow knight Sir Ringo released two EPs in 2021, utilizing the best in modern technology to unite some of his famous friends from Covid-induced isolation.

To his credit, it seems like Ringo has taken the pandemic very seriously, canceling an All Starr Band tour and largely staying safely ensconced at home. Though naturally, when you’re a living legend, staying holed up in your sprawling estate with a home recording studio is a little less trying than most of us schlubs spending weeks on end in our apartments. Ringo’s also a consummate professional, one who’s not going to let some pesky virus keep him from doing what he loves, so through the magic of the internet, he was able to harness the technology that has supported our social lives for the last two years to create not one, but two EPs in 2021.

Ringo said in an interview last year that he enjoyed the process of making EPs, and might just keep putting them out instead of albums for the rest of his career. Time will tell if that’s true, but it makes a certain degree of sense. It allows him to put out music more quickly, cranking out a few songs and releasing them without the pressure of having to put together a full 30-plus-minute LP. In the streaming era, album lengths don’t really matter that much anyway, so if Ringo doesn’t want to make albums anymore, maybe he’s just ahead of the curve.

It would also, in theory, allow for an all-killer, no-filler approach, since he’s not aiming for any particular benchmark of length. Whether you feel that’s actually achieved is up to you, but the shorter runtime might win over people who have a tougher time with his longer works.

The personnel for both Zoom In and Change the World contains a lot of now-familiar faces in the Ringo Extended Universe: Benmont Tench, Steve Lukather, Bruce Sugar, Nathan East, Sam Hollander, Amy Keys, Joe Walsh, and more. Zoom In does have a few surprises up its sleeve: The Doors’ Robby Krieger contributes guitar to “Zoom In Zoom Out,” and the Diane Warren-penned ballad “Heres to the Nights” features a celebrity choir to rival “We Are the World”: everyone from regulars like Paul and Walsh to more contemporary friends and fans like Ben Harper, Sheryl Crow, Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis, Dave Grohl, Americana superstars Yola and Chris Stapleton, Black Pumas’ Eric Burton, Billie Eilish’s brother/co-writer Finneas O’Connell, and other luminaries. As with other stacked Ringo choirs, their voices don’t really stand out, though I could hear some soulful wailing that I couldn’t quite identify as Stapleton, Burton, or maybe even Paul in his rocking register.

Of the two, I think Zoom In has the better songs. I quite liked “Zoom In Zoom Out,” which pairs a bluesy strut to lyrics offering some much-needed perspective, taking a look at the long view of history to illustrate the way things change over time, and how connection is the most important thing. “Not Enough Love in the World” has a fun, sprightly psych-pop feel, with buoyant horns that give it an almost Monkees-esque sound, ironic given that the Monkees were basically manufactured to cash in on the Beatles’ popularity.

Change the World is one song shorter, but its songs also feel a bit less distinct. It does have the pleasantly ambling country tune “Coming Undone,” written by songwriter extraordinaire Linda Perry and featuring Trombone Shorty doing his thing. Luckily, at only 13 minutes, it’s a quick and pleasant visit that doesn’t have time to overstay its welcome.

If you like white guy reggae, you’re in luck, as both EPs contain reggae tracks. “Waiting for the Tide to Turn” has a more spacey, dub-indebted vibe, whereas “Just That Way” is brighter and more cheerful. Incidentally, I learned a phrase that I will be using quite frequently from now on: “cod reggae,” referring to any inauthentic reggae, ie reggae not made by someone from Jamaica. It’s frequently used as a pejorative, though it isn’t inherently a bad thing; The Clash’s objectively great reggae-punk could be described as cod reggae. In this case, Ringo’s excursions into reggae always feel a little awkward, though I think they are sincere, and at least he’s got a solid sense of rhythm (not riddim) to hold it down.

If Ringo never makes another LP, I think that’s all right, as long as he keeps putting out these bite-sized collections to give us a quick hit of that irrepressible Starkey energy. The format seems to suit him, and anyway, he can do what he likes, he’s Ringo after all.

Beatles Solo Albums #69: McCartney III (2020)

I’ll never forget where I was.

March 2020. Concerns had been steadily growing over the prior few months about a new virus originating in China that was gaining a foothold around the world, causing serious respiratory illness. In Chicago where I live, some of the first cases in the US had been detected. Life was still going on as usual, but suddenly being in a crowded environment with other people was starting to feel dangerous, every cough and sniffle suspect.

Then, things began to shift. Tours started getting canceled, events started getting postponed, and the music school where I work decided to halt all in-person activities. I went into work, the building usually teeming with activity now eerily empty. I recorded myself playing “We’ll Meet Again” on the ukulele to send to my co-workers, not knowing at that time that I wouldn’t see most of them in person for over two years. Then, the governor issued a stay at home order, and I haven’t worked a single shift in that building since.

When this pandemic is all said and done (and I believe it will be someday), I genuinely don’t know how we’ll look back on this time. Most people already feel so keen to forget, even before it’s over. Our entertainment treats it like either a thing of the past or takes place in a fantasy world where it never happened. It’s hard to even know what the world is going to look like by the time it’s done, if we’ll be able to relate to each other in the same way. It’s been so uncertain for so long. I know that my life, and everyone’s lives, changed pretty much overnight, and I’m still dubious as to how much I want it to change back. But one thing’s for certain: this deep dive into the Beatles’ solo work has been a balm for my consistently dread-filled soul.

So here we are, the thus-far final full-length album from a former Beatle. The 69th (nice) overall. McCartney III.

The pandemic was probably the ideal time for Sir Paul to revisit his McCartney project, a full 40 years after the second incarnation McCartney II. With no prospects of touring or even gathering with other musicians, another one-man-band project was probably a no-brainer. So Paul holed up in his home studio and did what he did the last couple times his world shifted: wrote and recorded a set of songs on his own, playing all the instruments. Thus, in December 2020, in some of the darkest pre-vaccine days of the pandemic, McCartney III was released to strong sales (#1 in the UK and #2 in the US) and some of his best reviews since at least Chaos and Creation if not further back.

The songs on McCartney III feel a bit more fleshed out than the acoustic sketches of McCartney and synthpop noodling of McCartney II, but they share their predecessors more rough-hewn quality. As befitting their quick creation, they’re not as structurally or formally ambitious as Paul’s usual work, favoring extended grooves and simple structures; some, like “Find My Way,” seem built around just two chords. But the simplicity of the songs also adds a greater sense of immediacy and intimacy; at their best, the McCartney albums feel like we’re getting a peek into Paul’s process, sitting with him in the studio while the musical ideas tumble out of his head.

It kicks off with “Long Tailed Winter Bird,” which rides a hypnotic guitar riff played on the high strings over a scratchy rhythm of palm-muted guitar. Paul sings a simple refrain of “do you miss me / do you feel me / do you touch me,” adding in dissonant vocal harmonies and a synth line echoing the guitar. It pretty much just stays in that lane, adding in more instrumentation as it goes, making for a suitably strange and scrappy introduction.

The album alternates between fuzzy rockers and more muted, acoustic tracks like “Pretty Boys” or the lovely “The Kiss of Venus.” Paul uses his time-weathered voice in interesting ways, pushing into a high, airy falsetto on “Find My Way” or “Deep Deep Feeling,” then adopting an exaggerated gospel croon for “Women and Wives” or a goofy soul affect on the low-key funk of “Deep Down,” or pushing itself into the back of the mix on “Slidin’.” The vocal affectations fit with the album’s loose style, Paul seeming to just have fun in the studio trying on different guises.

“Slidin'” breaks with the album’s format a bit, being the only song to feature other musicians, in this case guitarist Rusty Anderson and drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. from Paul’s regular touring band. The song actually dates back to the Egypt Station sessions and carries a co-production credit from Greg Kurstin, and as a result feels like one of the more fleshed out tracks on the album. It’s also one of Paul’s heaviest songs in a while, with big booming drums and a low-pitched guitar riff that would sound almost metal if you turned it up a few decibels. The rhythm shifts frequently like crumbling earth beneath our feet, as Paul sings about wanting to take flight.

A few critics singled out the 8-plus minute “Deep Deep Feeling” as one track that doesn’t quite work, saying that it doesn’t earn its length, largely riding a repeating chorus with some instrumental variations. The song’s straightfoward lyrics, about the agony and the ecstasy of falling in love, wanting to escape the discomfort while at the same time wanting to stay in those feelings, also didn’t endear it to critics. It reminds me a bit of “Rinse the Raindrops” from Driving Rain, another very long song that features a repetitive structure put through a number of musical variations.

After all the experimentation and jamming and playing around, Paul ends the album with one of the things he does best: an acoustic ditty with a melody that feels like it’s been around forever. After a brief reprise of “Long Tailed Winter Bird,” Paul segues into “When Winter Comes,” a sweet song that marries acoustic guitar with Paul’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics about all the chores he has to do around the farm before the titular season takes hold. It’s a gentle and moving song made all the better for its simplicity, and it hit the same satisfying spot as earlier songs like McCartney II’s “One of These Days” or Flaming Pie’s “Calico Skies.” Interestingly, the song features production credit from George Martin, who passed away back in 2016; I’m not sure how he contributed to the track, but it feels like a lovely acknowledgement of a mentor.

So there you have it. 69 albums, 50 years, four men, two deaths, and a truckload of great songs. Listening to all of these albums has been illuminating, moving, surprising, at times frustrating, but altogether a joy. I’ve loved the Beatles since my mom used to sing me “Golden Slumbers” before bed as a little kid, like most of the world, probably. I hadn’t heard the vast majority of these albums before starting this project, but I’m walking away with a few new favorites, ones I’ve already played multiple times and will play multiple more times. Doing these projects always makes me feel a little closer to the artists I’m covering, and this project was no exception; seeing the ups and downs of their post-Beatles lives makes each of these men feel a little less mythic and a little more human. They all had their triumphs and their disappointments, their times where they had the critics and the public on their side, and times where they couldn’t catch a break. The common knock on the Beatles solo music is that none of it measures up to their time together as a band, and while that may be true to an extent, I think all four of these lads made some really great stuff on their own. There’s plenty of treasures to be found by those with the curiosity and the will to do it, and hopefully this blog will serve as a guide for anyone who wants to dive in.

Beatles Solo Albums #67: Egypt Station (2018)

After five years with only the interchangeable albums of Ringo to keep us company, Sir Paul McCartney finally returned with a new set of songs. He must have enjoyed working with contemporary producers on New, following it up by teaming with another producer with both pop success and indie cred. This time it’s Greg Kurstin, who’s worked with everyone from indie-pop darling Lily Allen to The Shins to pop stars like P!NK and Kelly Clarkson before reaching mega-producer status with Adele’s massive hit “Hello” along with most of 2015’s 25. He and Paul produced almost the entire album, save one track produced and co-written by fellow 2010s pop architect Ryan Tedder. That old Kurstin magic came through, when Egypt Station debuted at the top of the Billboard charts, the first Paul album to do so and his first #1 since Tug of War way back in 1982.

Paul said that Egypt Station was meant as a sort of concept album, with each song serving as a different stop on a journey beginning at the titular imaginary train station, illustrated by the opening track “Opening Station,” which begins with the sounds of a busy transit hub before a heavenly female choir floats in. It’s not a super well-defined concept, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter; at the end of the day, this is another solid batch of millennial Paul songs.

At almost an hour long, Egypt Station feels a bit bloated, with a few too many songs that fit the fairly standard Paul formula: some staccato piano chords here, a steady drum rhythm there, an acoustic guitar mingling with said piano, with maybe some strings thrown in for good measure. There’s an acoustic ballad, “Happy With You,” that sounds a bit like Flaming Pie’s “Little Willow.” “Come On to Me,” “Dominoes,” “Do it Now,” and most of “Despite Repeated Warnings” could be described as pretty standard Macca songs, which results in a bit of saminess at times, particularly when the songs are sequenced close to each other. Some songs start out one way before morphing into something more typically Paul, like how first single “I Don’t Know” starts off as something akin to the somber pop of Tears for Fears before turning into a more traditional Paul piano ballad.

Where the album gets more interesting is in the more musically adventurous segments, which break up the standard pop/rock with a bit more auditory interest. “Back in Brazil” and “Caesar Rock” layer in Latin-flavored rhythms with unexpected sounds, like “Brazil’s” 8-bit electronics or “Caesar’s” disco-esque guitar. “Caesar” in particular conjures up the sort of amiable pop experimentalism Paul and co. engaged in back in the late 60s, wedding pop-friendly melodies to shifting structures and studio tinkering. The final medley “Hunt You Down/Naked/C-Link,” the second medley on the album after “Despite Repeated Warnings,” starts off as crunchy Spoon-esque guitar rock before morphing into sprightly staccato piano-pop, morphing again into a downtempo blues-rock instrumental. It’s not quite as fresh as it was back in the day, but songs like these show Paul’s playful approach to experimentation is still intact.

“Despite Repeated Warnings” is an interesting track that mostly works, even if it offers more questions than answers. Considered Paul’s response to the Trump presidency, he doesn’t call out the would-be dictator directly, instead couching his sentiments in an allegory of a ship’s captain who has become unfit to lead, ignoring the advice of his counsel and steering straight towards disaster. He asks repeatedly in the chorus, “what can we do?” though the only solution proposed is to “lock him up,” an ironic choice of words given one of Trump’s preferred campaign slogans at the time. As a piece of recent historical protest art, I think the song works fairly well; it allows the insanity of the moment to live on its own, taking a less literal and more literary approach. Though if Paul thought the captain was unhinged in 2018, just wait till he sees what happens two years later!

Most of the album works pretty well, even if some of the songs feel a bit repetitive, though one that really doesn’t work for me is Tedder’s sole production credit, “Fuh You.” It sounds of-its-time in a way that the rest of the album doesn’t, a slice of overproduced late 2010s pop with a finger-snap rhythm and keyboards and what sounds like a sample in the chorus, which is built around an extremely goofy double-entendre. It sounds like Paul reaching for pop chart relevance in a way that seems deeply unnecessary.

Egypt Station isn’t my favorite Paul album, but it’s still a solid and enjoyable entry, with enough interesting moments to prove the man hasn’t lost much of his vitality or playful approach to music-making. And hey, the album’s #1 status goes to show that there’s still plenty of fans out there eager for more McCartney tunes.

Beatles Solo Albums #62: Ringo 2012 (2012)

One common gripe against Hollywood these days is their seemingly endless obsession with reboots, taking a beloved piece of IP from 30-plus years ago and giving it an either self-consciously “meta” sequel or half-baked reimagining solely for the purpose of holding on to said IP and capitalizing on nostalgia rather than for any greater artistic purpose. It’s a trend that doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon, particularly given how hugely profitable it is. As it turns out, Ringo Starr might have beaten Hollywood to the punch with his own largely underwhelming sequel Ringo 2012.

Facetious comparison aside, I’m not sure if Ringo was truly trying to follow up his 1973 self-titled classic with this album, but you can’t help but make the comparison given the mononymous title, plus the added year marker to signify it as a product of its time. Ringo was an absolute smash of an album, a blast of collaborative musical energy from a guy who had finally figured out what kind of solo artist he could be. Ringo 2012, by contrast, certainly isn’t a bad album, but it lacks the panache of its similarly-named predecessor. Instead, it’s a fairly standard Ringo album, made up of the usual bluesy bar-rockers and 60s-leaning psych pop, peppered with the requisite reminiscences and calls for peace and love.

At the very least, Ringo has the good sense to keep things brief this time around; Ringo 2012 clocks in at about 29 minutes. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but in the CD era, album lengths frequently ballooned to well over an hour, so I appreciate Ringo for not overstaying his welcome. And make no mistake, Ringo’s always welcome, even if just to give us a half hour or so of low-key, pleasant retro rock.

Ringo 2012 contains a couple of re-dos of older Ringo songs, one dating back from its self-titled predecessor (“Step Lightly”) and one from the oft-maligned Ringo the 4th (“Wings”). Neither of them do a whole lot to improve upon the originals; “Wings” was a fun, strutting highlight from Ringo the 4th, with a late-70s soul sheen given a slight reggae gloss in its new iteration. “Step Lightly” is actually given a bit of a reggae makeover too, in contrast to its more jaunty country-leaning arrangement on Ringo. Both are fine, but don’t really justify their existence. More successful is his cover of Buddy Holly’s “Think it Over,” originally released on the covers collection Listen to Me: Buddy Holly. Ringo keeps it simple, with an uptempo classic rock n’ roll arrangement lifted by backing vocals, guitar, and organ.

Ringo keeps most of the roster of collaborators the same as his last album Y Not, including instrumental and songwriting help from Joe Walsh, Dave Stewart, and Van Dyke Parks, along with musicians like Benmont Tench, Edgar Winter, Don Was, and Anne Marie Calhoun. Ringo and Stewart continue their ongoing series of songs about Ringo’s Liverpudlian childhood, following “Liverpool 8” and “The Other Side of Liverpool” with “In Liverpool.” “In Liverpool” takes a more rosy-eyed view of Ringo’s hardscrabble days, looking back fondly on the places he used to go, running around getting into mischief with his mates. Ringo said that he kept writing songs like these because he wanted to talk about things from his youth that people likely wouldn’t be as interested in if put in an autobiography, and I can’t help but wish “In Liverpool” had the same kind of specificity as “The Other Side of Liverpool,” the definite high-water mark of this (so far) trilogy.

Ringo seems to have more fun getting weird with co-writer Van Dyke Parks on the loopy “Samba,” which continues the “Pasodobles” tradition of dances-as-metaphor-for-relationships. Rather than turn in a straightforward samba track, Ringo and Parks instead seem to mash all Latin American music together, throwing in some Argentinian-sounding accordion with Spanish guitar and some slightly Brazilian rhythms. It’s a wild, freewheeling track that finds the world-music-mad Parks injecting a little bit of strangeness and complexity into Ringo’s style.

As with most Ringo album’s, it’s hard to dislike Ringo 2012, but it’s hard to really recommend it either. It did similar business to Y Not, garnering mixed reviews and entering the charts at #80 in the US and #181 in the UK. Ringo seems pretty solidly interested in playing to his usual crowd at this point in his career, and while I can’t really blame him for that, it does become considerably less interesting if you’re not already a fan. If you are a fan, however, I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t like this one as much as any of the others.

Beatles Solo Albums #60: Liverpool 8 (2008)

Liverpool 8 marks the final collaboration between Ringo and his writing/producing partner Mark Hudson, who had a falling out towards the end of the album’s recording. Accounts differ as to the reason for the split, with Hudson saying that Ringo was interested in exploring more synthesized sounds whereas he wanted organic instruments, and Ringo saying that it was due to Hudson dropping out of the All Starr Band tour to take on a job as a judge on a TV music special. Whatever the reason, Hudson was replaced late in the process by Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, who helped polish up the songs in the final stretch. The producing credits on the album read “produced by Ringo Starr and Mark Hudson; re-produced by Ringo Starr and David Stewart.” Ouch.

It’s too bad the duo went their separate ways, as Hudson had been a strong guiding presence on Ringo’s albums for a decade, albums which found the legendary drummer embracing his past both sonically and lyrically, creating music that called back to the 60s and 70s but also fit in with contemporary alternative rock sounds of the day. They brought a certain amount of low-key prestige back to Ringo’s name, even if they rarely cracked the charts.

Luckily, Liverpool 8 is still very much a Starr/Hudson album, with Hudson credited as a co-writer on all the songs along with their fellow regular array of collaborators Steve Dudas, Gary Burr, and Dean Grakal. Stewart doesn’t really reinvent the Ringo wheel as producer; it’s interesting that Hudson talked about Ringo wanting to use more synthesized sounds, since this album is very much in the same wheelhouse as their previous work together, with 60 psych-pop and 70s blues-rock sounds dominating most songs.

The album kicks off with its title track, a Ringo/Stewart co-write that starts as an ode to the shipmen and dockworkers of Ringo’s hometown before transitioning into a look at the Beatles’ early days. Gentle acoustic guitars and ornate strings enfold the more traditional rock band setup of drums and guitar, lending the song a more epic sweep that made me think we might be in for something more ambitious this time around. From the album’s title and leadoff track, I was picturing some kind of concept album about growing up in Liverpool or something along those lines.

That ends up being a bit of a red herring, as Liverpool 8 quickly establishes itself as business as usual for Ringo at this point in his career. Amiable, well-played, enjoyable business as usual, but not really diverging much from the formula he’d settled into since his comeback Time Takes Time. There’s the requisite introspection (“Liverpool 8,” “Gone Are the Days”) and love songs (“For Love,” “Give it a Try,” “Tuff Love,” “If It’s Love You Want,” “Love Is”), suffused with 60s psychedelia and crunchy 70s rock stomp. He does throw in a few interesting instrumental touches here and there, like on “Gone Are the Days” which opens with odd droning tones and echoing vocals before giving way to a surprisingly buzzy synth line before switching up again to more straightforward jangle pop, and “For Love” has an enjoyably shifting groove under its pounding piano and swirling backing vocals.

There are a few moments, particularly towards the end of the album, where Ringo dabbles in some unexpected sounds, for better or worse. “Harry’s Song” is a sweet, shuffling jazz number and tribute to Ringo’s departed friend Harry Nilsson, sounding like a lost music hall 78 brought into the present day. On the other hand, “Pasodobles” is a Spanish-set song using the titular dance as a metaphor for attraction, and it is incredibly silly. For all his virtues, Ringo is not a natural loverman, and his attempt at a sensual Spanish ballad ends up being more funny than romantic.

The album ends with “R U Ready,” a strange but not unwelcome gospel-leaning track that marries fingerpicked banjo with Ringo singing a simple spiritual melody, his voice hard-panned to one channel, filtered as if coming out of an old timey radio. The song is a straightforward look at death and the beyond, done in the style of a Southern Christian gospel song with lyrics referencing various world religions. It sits in the same comfortable lane as Paul’s last ode to mortality “The End of the End,” looking ahead without any fear but with the certainty that death is just another state of transition.

I’ll be interested to see where Ringo’s music goes from here without the input of Hudson, though from a quick glance through his future albums, it looks like Ringo’s settled into a groove of releasing a new album every few years that gets mixed reviews and settles on the lower reaches of the charts. Not all that different from his last few albums, really.

Beatles Solo Albums #57: Choose Love (2005)

Ringo’s 21st Century renaissance continues with 2005’s Choose Love, arguably the first of many Ringo albums to feature a photo of himself flashing his now-signature peace sign. While the album was generally well received by the press, it sadly didn’t reach even the modest commercial heights of Vertical Man or Ringorama, failing to chart in either the US or UK. On the other hand, most critics found it to be an amiable and solid set of songs, making this another of probably Ringo’s most artistically consistent run of albums since his very early solo days.

Continuing the creative partnership he’d enjoyed with Mark Hudson, Gary Burr, Dean Grakal, and Steve Dudas, Choose Love follows the retro-leaning rock template of its predecessors, with maybe a touch or two less high studio gloss on the songs. They’re still the kind of heavily produced, full-sounding songs as on prior albums, but they feel a bit more down to earth this time around.

Ringo and his writing/producing partners seem to be having fun with all the strange little psychedelic touches they can throw into the mix, like the weird guitar tones on the opening “Fading In and Out” or the intro/outtro of “Oh My Lord,” which sounds like Ringo recorded it himself with a Fisher Price tape recorder (which, for all I know, he did), or how “Hard to Be True” piles spaghetti western guitars on top of a Drifters-esque doo-wop rhythm. Ringo really goes all out on the closing song “Free Drinks,” tossing together spy-movie guitars, a cymbal-heavy drum pattern, and a weird echoey vocal treatment.

Much like Ringo’s last few records, Choose Love is a very self-reflexive album, referencing sounds and songs from his Beatles and early solo days. This is most overt on the title track, which throws in references to Ringo’s “It Don’t Come Easy” along with Beatles tracks “The Long and Winding Road” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” I’m not entirely sure what Ringo’s trying to say by throwing out these references, at least beyond “hey, remember that one?,” but it seems like they mean something to him at this point in his career.

Other songs don’t make reference in their lyrics, but musically feel like something from the Beatles’ mid-60s period, where their pop stylings were beginning to give way to their more experimental impulses. Rickenbacker-style guitars chime in “Some People;” “Turnaround” has a syncopated “Taxman”-esque guitar line; “Don’t Hang Up,” a duet with the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, has a sort of “I Am the Walrus” type of anxious psych sound; the aforementioned “Oh My Lord,” an album highlight, sounds like something George might have come up with, with its lyrics about longing for comfort from a divine power along with its strummed guitar and slide solos. The style of that era is all over this album, and it’s a look that Ringo continues to wear well.

In a slight deviation from previous albums, the celebrity guest quotient on Choose Love is surprisingly low. Along with the aforementioned Chrissie Hynde, old Beatle buddy Billy Preston is credited on piano and organ throughout, and pedal steel legend Robert Randolph is credited on lead guitar, but that’s about it for notable guests. Only Hynde gets an individual showcase, but I could hear the unmistakable vibe of Preston’s skill behind the keys, not unlike how he livened up some of the songs on Let it Be (and if you’ve seen the recent Get Back documentary, you’ll know that the boys really needed his help to bring that one together). Ringo’s wife Barbara provides one line as the “devil voice” on “The Turnaround,” which is actually pretty creepy, so kudos Barbara!

As with pretty much all Ringo albums, there’s a lot to like about Choose Love, even if it doesn’t feel like there’s a whole lot to say about it. Ringo’s never been the type to be too concerned with making some kind of grand artistic statement, seeming to prefer making music for the sheer joy of it, and his partnership with Hudson continues to pay off with another solid batch of songs.