Dolly Parton #37: Treasures (1996)

After an album of all-Dolly originals, perhaps it was inevitable that the pendulum would swing back the other way and we’d get another covers album. Luckily, Treasures is a pretty good one, even if it can’t help but feel inessential by its very nature. Dolly’s last covers album, The Great Pretender, was back in 1984, during her peak pop star era, and felt very much like it was trying to fit into the mold of the times with synth-heavy arrangements. Treasures doesn’t exactly avoid the trappings of its decade, but feels more organic on the whole.

Treasures is Dolly’s first album with a new label; after her contract with Columbia expired, she decided to join Doug Morris over at Atlantic Records, as she claimed he was the only executive that really took her seriously as an artist. After Morris got pushed out of Atlantic, he started his own label Rising Tide Records, partnering with MCA, and Dolly followed him there. She also started her own imprint, Blue Eye Records, though I’m not sure how all that businessy stuff works. Maybe with all that tumult, a covers album felt like a soft landing.

The album is mostly made up of hits from the 70s and 80s, ranging from the expected country standards to singer/songwriter stuff and pop chestnuts, all delivered in her signature country style, polished to a blinding sheen. It kicks off with her cover of Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train,” beginning with a sound you might not expect to hear on a Dolly Parton album: the indelible tones of South African vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Evidently Dolly wanted a backing choir for the song but couldn’t find what she was looking for until she heard the group singing in a Lifesavers commercial and sought them out. They mostly take a backseat during the verses, but get an extended intro and outro to show their stuff. Basically any recording is improved by the presence of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Dolly blends with them surprisingly well.

I give credit to Dolly and her producer Steve Buckingham for choosing a set of songs that digs a little deeper to find its chestnuts. As you might expect, her takes on country tunes like Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again,” Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” or Carl Butler and Pearl’s “Don’t Let Me Cross Over” are all easily nailed by Dolly and her band, the latter even feeling like something she could’ve written with its tale of a woman tempted to cheat on her partner. Other country tunes work even better when they introduce new elements, like Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo playing accordion and singing a Spanish verse on “Before the Next Teardrop Falls,” which is fitting given that original artist Freddy Fender did the same thing.

There’s quite a few guests on the album, from the aforementioned Hidalgo to Union Station’s Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski, Blues Traveler’s John Popper, and the Mavericks’ Raul Malo. They mostly take a back seat, lending some lovely, ethereal harmonies in the case of Krauss and Tyminski. Popper gets to do his thing all over “Today I Started Loving You Again,” which might be the most 90s part of the album. The Mavericks are one of my favorite country groups of the era, so I was hoping Malo would get a bit more of a showcase, but he’s just there to back Dolly up on “Don’t Let Me Cross Over.”

The covers are all pretty straightforward, but that doesn’t mean Dolly and her band don’t work magic with them at times. Probably the most unexpected choice is her cover of Neil Young’s melancholy, stoned anthem “After the Gold Rush,” its simple piano arrangement transformed into downtuned guitar, ethereal vocals, and thudding drums. Dolly naturally takes out any drug references, but her plaintive voice still works wonders. Even better is the final track, her take on “For the Good Times.” Written by Kris Kristofferson and first performed by Ray Price, it’s a stately song to begin with, but Dolly transforms it into a lush, jazzy, American Songbook-esque standard, her voice adorned with guitar, piano, and subtle strings. It’s a beautiful, heartwrenching song about clinging to a love that’s run its course, and it’s an absolutely transportive moment to end this collection.

Dolly Parton #33: Eagle When She Flies (1991)

As the 90s dawned, country music seemed to go through one of its many identity crises. The 80s had seen pop sounds creeping their way into Nashville, synths and drum machines supplanting pedal steels and fiddles, or otherwise awkwardly living alongside them. By 1990, a dude from Oklahoma named Garth Brooks took the country and pop world by storm, his sophomore album No Fences becoming a smash hit and the follow-up Ropin’ the Wind debuting at #1 on the pop charts. Not for the first or last time, the country establishment got their leather spats in a bunch over “authenticity” in their music, over what it meant for a star to storm the charts as both a country and pop act.

It was into this maelstrom that Dolly Parton returned squarely to country after chasing pop stardom through the 80s, and was richly rewarded for it. Where her more pop-focused albums had presence on both pop and country charts, it seemed that she was splitting her fandom down the middle somewhat, not ascending to the peak of either chart. With 1991’s Eagle When She Flies, Dolly received her first #1 country album in over a decade since 1980’s 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs. It even had some pop chart presence, peaking at #24, not bad for an album that isn’t reaching for pop acceptance. While everyone hemmed and hawed about Garth Brooks, old pros like Dolly showed they still had an audience.

I’m a 90s baby, so that decade’s contribution to country is the stuff I grew up hearing at home. My parents weren’t huge country fans, but they had a few Garth CDs, as well as others by fellow 90s luminaries like Lorrie Morgan, Collin Raye, Clint Black, and Dwight Yoakam. Country of the early 90s has a very recognizable sound to me; a little bit traditional, with guitars and fiddles and pedal steel, but with a shiny coat of polish and that big, booming drum sound that seemed to carry over from the 80s. All that to say, Eagle When She Flies fits very squarely in its era.

Dolly does a lot more songwriting on this album, writing or co-writing eight of its eleven songs. It kicks off with “If You Need Me,” a jangly, upbeat slice of country-pop with a classic Dolly theme of sticking it to some jerk who mistreats her character. It’s followed by “Rockin’ Years,” a sweet ballad and duet with singer Ricky Van Shelton, the album’s only #1 country single. It’s a gently moving ode to devotion, its twin voices pledging their allegiance through the “rockin’ years:” “rockin’ chairs, rockin’ babies, rock-a-bye, rock of ages.” In other words, through all the stages of adult life. It’s one of the few songs Dolly didn’t write, instead it’s contributed by her brother Floyd.

Most of the album covers fairly well-trodden ground for Dolly, taking a couple shots at materialism and status on “Country Road” and “Silver and Gold,” the latter very much a “you can’t take it with you” kind of thing. There’s songs about love lost and love gained, heartfelt ballads and more upbeat tunes. I particularly liked “Runaway Feelin'” a driving country rocker that manages to capture the excitement of a new love, and the way it can sweep you away. There’s another duet, this time with the aforementioned Lorrie Morgan on “Best Woman Wins,” in which the two singers compete for the affections of a man. It feels a bit old-fashioned, even regressive, today, but the 90s were a different time.

The title track is an enjoyable ballad in 3/4 time, exploring the duality of womanhood, the strength as well as the vulnerability. Women, in Dolly’s view, can be a powerful force of nature, strong and unbending, or they can be soft, caring, nurturing. Much as she did on 9 to 5’s “Working Girl,” Dolly paints a portrait of the wide scope of the female experience, as wives, mothers, lovers, friends, as people who love hard and feel deeply.

Another one that felt noteworthy is “Family,” a song about accepting the foibles of our families, loving and supporting them no matter what. It has to be the first use of “gay” I’ve ever heard in a country song, especially one from the early 90s, when Dolly sings “some are preachers, some are gay / some are addicts, drunks, and strays.” It’s incredibly refreshing to hear it thrown in there as just one of the many types of people you could have in your family, with the message that they deserve your love just as much as anyone. It’s no secret that country’s never been the most queer-friendly genre of music, despite having queer fans all along, but Dolly didn’t become a godmother to the queer community by accident, and moments like this show she’s been long ahead of the curve.

The album ends with the subtly heartbreaking ballad “Wildest Dreams.” Co-written with her old duet partner Mac Davis, it’s a heartfelt look at a romance winding down, its narrator wanting the best for her beloved even if they can’t be together. I know I’ve always wanted the best for my exes, and I don’t think that’s something we see depicted very often in our culture; usually breakups are angry and everyone leaves on bad terms. But sometimes, people go in different directions, and we can be grown up enough to wish them well. It’s certainly a big change from her earlier song “I Hope You’re Never Happy,” that’s for sure.

Eagle When She Flies is a perfectly respectable Dolly Parton album, with some good songs and Dolly giving it her all as usual. It didn’t quite set my heart aflame, but I couldn’t find much fault with it either. It feels like Dolly’s entering into a new phase of her career; no longer chasing the pop charts or having to prove herself as a solo artist, she can settle into a sort of “elder” stateswoman status (putting “elder” in quotes since she was only like 45), content to make the music of her heart, confident that her fans will follow her there.

Dolly Parton #22: Dolly, Dolly, Dolly (1980)

The 80s have dawned, and Dolly Parton wasted very little time planting her foot in the new decade with Dolly, Dolly, Dolly, released in April of that year. The album continued her hot streak, landing two #1 singles on the country chart and topping out at #7 country and #71 pop. A bit of a decline albums-wise, but still pretty good. And yet, despite the triple dose of Dolly in the album’s title, Dolly herself is actually a bit less present on this album; it’s her first album to feature no self-penned songs since her Porter Wagoner tribute. Instead, songwriting duties have been shopped out to a number of hitmaking professionals from the pop and country worlds, who to their credit seem to understand their client pretty well. Dolly, Dolly, Dolly is very much in the vein of Dolly’s current shiny pop phase, with all the big budget studio goodies the early 80s has to offer.

With no Dolly-penned songs, there’s an inescapable air of cash-in to this album, and it ends up feeling not quite as satisfying as her other work. That said, it’s still as admirably sung and played as ever, there are some enjoyable tunes threaded throughout, and its sonic variety means it hardly ever feels boring or repetitive. The album opens with “Starting Over Again,” a piano and synth ballad penned by disco queen Donna Summer and her husband Bruce Sudano; it’s a somber divorce anthem wherein its recently separated couple struggle to adapt to life without each other after so many years together, their children grown, themselves firmly in middle age. It doesn’t offer any easy resolutions; by the end, the two are just as unsure as they were at the start, though it also manages to highlight the disparities between men and women, where “he’s scheming big deals with one of his friends / while she sits at home / just sorting out pieces / of leftover memories / from 30 odd years.” Summer and Sudano understood the assignment pretty well, penning a tune that Dolly herself might have come up with.

From there, the album is very much a product of the early 80s, with bright danceable pop like “You’re the Only One I Ever Needed” and “Fool for Your Love,” along with slow-burn piano ballads like “Even a Fool Would Let Go” or “I Knew You When,” the latter written by “The Piña Colada Song’s” Rupert Holmes, who splits the difference between a classic old school ballad and something presaging his turn to musical theatre. She does mix it up a few times in fun ways, particularly on the 6/8 time acoustic country love song “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You” and the updated doo wop shuffle of “Say Goodnight.” “Sweet Agony” is a bit of an odd duck, with skronky synth bass over vaguely reggae guitars and hand percussion, creating a strutting rhythm, and the album ends with an honest to goodness rock song on “Packin’ it Up,” as Dolly sings an ode to the joy of hitting the town with her man over crunchy guitar riffage.

Dolly, Dolly, Dolly has a bit of an “all things to all people” kind of feel, throwing a lot of ideas at the wall to see what sticks, though as usual, Dolly’s talent as a performer carries the day. She commits to all of it equally, and fits surprisingly well into each style. It can’t help but feel a bit like a transitional album, one hedging its bets in the face of a new decade, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had. Gary Klein’s production is pristine in the way that only late 70s/early 80s studio pop can be, and it helps that Dolly’s band has ringers like the MGs’ Steve Cropper and Little Feat’s Fred Tackett, alongside great session players like Tom Scott, Abraham Laboriel, and Nathan East. Dolly was on the cusp of another breakthrough in her career, poised to break out into film later that year, so maybe this album was meant to remind everyone what she could do musically…as if we needed any reminding.

Dolly Parton #21: Great Balls of Fire (1979)

Dolly Parton closes out her ascendant decade of the 70s with Great Balls of Fire, an album firmly rooted in her pop-focused sensibilities that still makes room for some musical adventurousness. I can imagine the album might have been considered a bit of a disappointment at the time; it still netted a #1 country single with “You’re the Only One,” but the album itself topped out at #4 on the country albums chart and #40 pop, her first not to reach #1 in country for several years. Obviously #4 is still really good business, but anything less than total dominance tends to be viewed as a failure in cases like this.

Luckily, Great Balls of Fire is a solid album, maybe not quite as quality as Heartbreaker but pretty darn close. Musically it’s all over the place, careening from the thumping disco-pop of opener “Star of the Show” to the requisite Carol Bayer Sager/Bruce Roberts big 70s ballad “You’re the Only One” to a bluegrass-styled cover of the Beatles’ “Help!” (featuring bluegrass legends Herb Pedersen and Ricky Skaggs on harmony vocals) to whatever the hell “Sweet Summer Lovin'” is, and beyond. It’s a testament to Dolly’s artistry that it all hangs together as well as it does. She’s made a point of taking big swings in tone and style, and I think that goes a long way towards making her albums feel oddly cohesive.

Great Balls of Fire never stays in one style very long. Along the way, she finds time to dip into country-leaning soul on songs like the very cool “Down” or the title track, a credible cover of the immortal Jerry Lee Lewis classic, and ends the album with “Sandy’s Song,” a nifty slice of minor-key folk with a melody reminiscent of Medieval ballads like “Greensleeves” or the Christmas perennial “What Child is This.” It feels like a welcome respite from the bright, gleaming pop tracks on the rest of the album. The production from Dean Parks and Gregg Perry (overseen by Dolly herself along with label exec Charles Koppelman) is the sort of high-gloss, big budget production found on a lot of 70s and 80s pop, with nary a note or synth effect out of place. It would probably feel a bit bloodless if Dolly’s personality and talent didn’t carry it through.

I mentioned “Sweet Summer Lovin’,” and I wanted to elaborate a little bit. A gauzy bit of country/pop/disco/soul/bluegrass/something, it’s one of the more adventurous tracks on the album from a musical standpoint. Over a steady beat, the producers layer on bright synths and backing vocals alongside fingerpicked banjo and guitar, even throwing in a tootling flute solo towards the end, as Dolly sings a love-drunk ode to summertime romance. It feels like a pretty good distillation of the Dolly Parton effect, combining sounds and ideas that shouldn’t work together at all into something that transcends them all through sheer force of will. You can hear the dance-country of later artists like Kacey Musgraves being born here.

Dolly truly became a superstar over the course of the 70s, and she closes out the decade in fine fashion on this album. Her output slows somewhat in the 80s, no doubt due in part to her branching out into movies and other forms of entertainment, but her star has never really diminished. Looking back on my reviews of her work at the start of the decade, it’s pretty astonishing how far she’s come in a relatively short amount of time, from a bona fide country star with some pop potential to a full-on pop star.

Dolly Parton #17: All I Can Do (1976)

Dolly took an uncharacteristically long break between albums after Dolly; almost a year went by before she released the follow-up All I Can Do in August of 1976. All that time seemed to pay off, as All I Can Do is probably her best record since Jolene, a fun and spirited set of songs that’s generally much more upbeat than her past couple outings.

I hadn’t even noticed at the time, but Dolly’s regular producer Bob Ferguson has been absent for the past couple albums; Porter Wagoner was the sole credited producer on Dolly, and he co-produces with Dolly on this album. This would be the last solo Dolly album that would have any involvement from him, though the two would continue to release duets for a while longer. I’m not sure exactly what the division of labor was on the album, but the arrangements are generally pretty stellar, making use of the Lea Jane Singers backing choir to create a stirring, gospel-leaning sound. It seems that the public enjoyed this more upbeat side of Dolly, as both the album and title track made it as high as #3 on the country charts. Not the #1s she’d been enjoying, but pretty good nonetheless.

When I listen through an album, I take some brief notes to help my future self have a sense of the feeling of a song, and most of these tracks are peppered with adjectives like “chugging,” “driving,” “charging,” “strutting,” which I think encapsulates the feel of the album. Even the requisite breakup song “Falling Out of Love With Me,” where Dolly’s narrator quits a relationship before the other person can quit first, moves with a jaunty rhythm. It doesn’t slow down until side 2, when Dolly covers the Emmylou Harris tune “Boulder to Birmingham,” the rare Dolly tune to extend past the 4 minute mark. Dolly takes her time with it, giving it a slow-burn gospel power that matches the deep wells of grief in the song. Harris co-wrote the song with Starland Vocal Band’s (aka the group behind “Afternoon Delight”) Bob Danoff about her grief at the passing of her friend Gram Parsons, with whom she recorded several songs. Harris’s version is stirring, and Dolly doesn’t do too much to change it, but she doesn’t have to; it’s a gorgeous, deeply moving song that works in both of their hands.

Dolly’s originals are no slouch on the album either. Plenty of songs deal with love, their gospel trappings conflating the romantic with the sacred. “All I Can Do” finds Dolly’s narrator just looking for a short fling, but falling for the guy anyway. She carries this through to the second track “The Fire That Keeps You Warm,” where she offers to be the support and strength that her partner needs. “When the Sun Goes Down Tomorrow” is another of Dolly’s classic “going home” songs, where her narrator leaves the stifling confines of the big city, hoping that her lost love is still back home waiting for her.

One song that isn’t so rosy is the third single “Shattered Image,” which didn’t chart, probably because it contains a bit too much truth. In it, Dolly takes aim at the haters who seek to ruin her image with spurious rumors, using the metaphor of obliterating her reflection in a river by dropping stones into it. She uses some pretty classic “people in glass houses” kind of imagery, along with the wonderfully succinct line “stay out of my closet if your own’s full of trash.” I don’t think Dolly’s ever confirmed it, but she was beginning to become tabloid fodder around this time, and it’s speculated that this song is in response to that. She has said that it’s meant more generally, about the town gossip as much as the tabloids, and it certainly fits with all of that.

All I Can Do is a pretty terrific album from Dolly, and feels like a breath of fresh air after the last couple, which were generally lovely but felt a bit plodding in their moroseness. Dolly sounds great throughout, and the Lea Jane Singers add a great deal to her songs, their tight harmonies swelling or lilting depending on the mood. I’m excited to see where she goes from here without the guiding influence of Wagoner; I already know it’s only further into the stratosphere.

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 #68: What’s My Name (2019)

Well friends, it finally happened. Midway through “Gotta Get Up to Get Down,” the opening song of Sir Ringo Starr’s 2019 album What’s My Name, an old white guy starts rapping. Thankfully, said white guy is not Ringo, although hearing his Scouse dialect spit bars might have at least been more entertaining. No, the white guy in question is actually Ringo’s friend, brother-in-law, and regular collaborator Joe Walsh, whose attempts at rapping lines like “Everybody’s on the Internet, what’s up with that / Your body just waitin’ for your brain to come back” and “Everybody’s on Facebook, doin’ their thing / Nobody knows what the thing is / Tweetin’ up a storm, yeah, they’re crawlin’ on the ground” is quite possibly the most cringe-worthy old-guy sentiment ever expressed in song. The general theme of the song, that you have to put down the phone and actually experience life, isn’t a terrible one, but it can’t help but come across as “kids these days” complaining, particularly when trying to ape a very youthful musical style (and doing it so, so badly).

Opening with such a frankly embarrassing song had me worried for this particular Ringo collection, but luckily the album does manage to recover its dignity for the most part. Recorded once again in Ringo’s home studio Roccabella West with his usual roster of collaborators (newly minted MC Walsh, Steve Lukather, Benmont Tench, Edgar Winter, etc.), it did about as well as his last few albums, garnering mixed reviews and low chart placement, but once again Ringo doesn’t seem too concerned about all that. He’s just making music with his friends at this point, sharing it with us in case we want to hear what they’re up to.

Ringo seems to be in a good mood throughout this record, and clearly wants us to be in a good mood as well. Just look at some of these song titles: “Magic,” “Better Days,” “Life is Good,” “Thank God for Music,” “Send Love Spread Peace.” He did occasionally go darker on previous records, but grumbles about social media aside, he seems mainly interested in having a good time at this point, with an upbeat set of pop/rock tracks. One of the album’s most moving moments is also its most melancholy: Ringo performs a cover of “Grow Old With Me,” a John Lennon-penned song originally released in a lo-fi demo version on his posthumous Milk and Honey album. Ringo invited Paul to come and play bass on the recording, and Jack Douglas’s string arrangement interpolates a bit of George’s “Here Comes the Sun,” consciously bringing together all four Beatles both living and passed on. Ringo plays the song straight, with a vibe reminiscent of 50s slow-dances, and it makes for a sweet, moving moment that stands in contrast to the more party-minded tracks on the rest of the album.

His other cover of “Money (That’s What I Want),” a song the Beatles also covered way back in the day, sadly falls more into the “embarrassing” camp, with its heavily autotuned vocals feeling like an awkward attempt to modernize a song that really doesn’t need it. Ringo’s no stranger to applying filters to his voice, but usually they fit better with the overall vibe of the song, or they’re subtle enough that they don’t call too much attention to themselves. Here, the choice feels deliberate and clunky, and makes for the other bum note on the album besides “Gotta Get Up to Get Down.”

Luckily, these cringey moments are the exception, with most songs playing straight into Ringo’s amiable, vaguely retro pop/rock wheelhouse. “It’s Not Love That You Want,” co-written with Dave Stewart, is a fun slice of hooky power pop with some honky tonk piano. “Better Days,” written by prolific songwriter Sam Hollander, has an enjoyable R&B flavor not unlike Ringo’s early solo work. The title track, written by former Men At Work frontman/Scrubs-approved solo artist Colin Hay, is a gutsy country-rocker complete with slide solos and harmonica. The title comes from a chant Ringo does at his concerts, which he helpfully replicates on the song, and it’s a lot of fun.

What’s My Name is Ringo’s most recent long-player, and may be his last; in an interview last year, he mentioned how much he’s enjoyed making EPs and that he might just do those for the rest of his career. Whether that ends up being true remains to be seen, but whatever form Ringo’s music takes, I appreciate that he’s remained true to himself, content to jam with some of his friends and spread positivity. There’s far worse things a legend like himself could be doing with his time, at any rate.

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 #66: Give More Love (2017)

Ringo’s comfy millennial streak continues apace with 2017’s Give More Love, another cozy, generally solid set of songs. Ringo initially planned to head back to Nashville for the first time since 1970’s Beaucoups of Blues to make another country record with his regular collaborator Dave Stewart, but changed plans mid-stream and ended up recording mostly rock tracks in his LA home studio with his now-regular roster of collaborators. The result is an album that feels very much in line with all of his records of late, albeit with a bit more sonic variety.

Ringo once again produced the set himself, and in general there’s a bit more of a harder rock edge to many of these songs than previous albums. Not really heavy–this is Ringo after all–but he lets guitarist friends like Peter Frampton and Toto’s Steve Lukather let loose a bit and show their stuff. Sometimes you just wanna hear some good ol’ rock guitar, and Lukather turns in some solid solos on the album opener “We’re On the Road Again,” an anthem to the traveling musician. Frampton even gets to pull out his iconic talkbox for some soloing on the chugging country-rock of “Speed of Sound.” Paul even shows up to play bass and backing vocals on a couple tracks, content to just be a part of the band and not assert his own personality too much, though on “We’re On the Road Again,” you can hear him wailing in the background towards the end.

Ringo generally retains his positive outlook on life, but even he admits that the world of 2017 wasn’t exactly ideal. “Laughable,” co-written by Frampton, is an extremely relatable song, both in 2017 and 2022, with lyrics like the chorus’ “it would be laughable if it wasn’t sad,” and the first verse “Woke up this morning I was feeling good / Turned up the radio I understood / Things are changing like never before / Then I go back to bed and close the door.” Living through the seemingly endless parade of misery around the globe over the past six-ish years is enough to make even a peace-and-love guy like Ringo feel a bit despondent. He does manage to rally on the bridge, reminding us that “it’s going to hell, but not forever.” Ringo’s lived a lot of life, seen a lot of scary times, and he knows the pendulum will eventually swing back the other way (hopefully, anyway).

Elsewhere, Ringo continues to mine his back pages for material, paying homage to his old Rory and the Hurricanes bandmate, known in the song as “Johnny Guitar,” a man of such musical prowess that he had “electricity coming through his fingers” when he played. For once, this autobiographical excursion isn’t co-written by Dave Stewart, but rather by Alanis Morissette’s collaborator Glen Ballard. Stewart did co-write “So Wrong for So Long,” a classic country ballad and the last remaining vestige of their original plan for the album. It’s a classic topic for a country track, with Ringo’s narrator lamenting falling in love with a woman who ended up cheating on him, set over acoustic guitar and pedal steel. In a similar vein, “Shake it Up” is a very fun rockabilly rave-up, bringing to mind Ringo’s lead vocal on the Beatles cover of “Matchbox” way back in the day. It’s a good reminder that Country & Western is a guise that Ringo always wore surprisingly well, and I hope someday he does return to that genre for a full album.

I’ve enjoyed these Ringo albums for what they are, but I have to admit I’m glad we’re almost done, because I feel like I’ve been struggling to figure out what to say about them over the last few posts. Like the others, it was released to mixed reviews and middling sales, not cracking the Hot 100 this time but doing a bit better internationally. Ringo can do what he likes, and he does, but I’m still glad to have him around regardless of what he’s giving us.