The Beatles' Solo Careers Poll - Voting and General Discussion Thread

(xpost)

'Mumbo' is terrible - there's some underrated stuff on Wild Life, though. 'Bip Bop' is terrible also.

I'm with you on "Hope of Deliverance" -- just a giant arc of a lovely melody. And when a pal and I heard "Arrow Through Me" in early 2007 we thought, "Man, imagine if a hip hop producer sampled it..." Erykah Badu did three years later

Yeah for Wild Life the real keepers are Some People Never Know and Tomorrow.

Agreed about "Hope of Deliverance".
I wonder why it's not on his "Pure McCartney" comilation (not even on the 67 tracks deluxe version !)

Yeah for Wild Life the real keepers are Some People Never Know and Tomorrow.

― ColinO, Wednesday, May 16, 2018 10:46 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, completely agree!

lol I almost presented it as Mumbo *and* Bip Bop. wish the whole album was more like those. "Hey Diddle" would slot in well with those. Just a whole album of a novice band finding a single hook and a chord progression that feels good and running through it over and over.

Usually Paul had much more of a filter for that kind of thing - like you can tell he knew that "A Love For You" sounded incredible but that as a *song* it was sort of shapeless compared to the other Ram material - could be two minutes, could be eight. With the Wild Life stuff, even more than the ostensibly dgaf home-grown debut, it's like he just lets the tape run and there's the album.

idk how many of my above list *I'll* vote for once I have all the stone-cold classics locked in, but definitely a few...

Yeah for Wild Life the real keepers are Some People Never Know and Tomorrow.

Agreed on both of these, I quite like Love Is Strange as well.

I thought the real keeper off Wild Life was Dear Friend, I'm a sucker for songs Paul and John write about each other tho

I'm with you on "Hope of Deliverance" -- just a giant arc of a lovely melody. And when a pal and I heard "Arrow Through Me" in early 2007 we thought, "Man, imagine if a hip hop producer sampled it..." Erykah Badu did three years later

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

i didn't know about the badu connection til now! "arrow through me" came on (listening to Pure McCartney to try to brush up on the hits) and i was deeply confused for a second. "gone baby, don't be long" has been one of my most played songs this year, and i had no idea it sampled wings!

here's a deep Ringo cut someone already voted for

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdjA1UeR-SQ

also just realized I left the tracklistings off of Ringo's albums, will fix shortly

Yay!

RINGO STARR

Solo

Sentimental Journey
Sentimental Journey
Night And Day
Whispering Grass (Don't Tell The Trees)
Bye Bye Blackbird
I'm A Fool To Care
Star Dust
Blue, Turning Grey Over You
Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing
Dream
You Always Hurt The One You Love
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You
Let The Rest Of The World Go By

Beaucoups of Blues
Beaucoups Of Blues
Love Don't Last Long
Fastest Growing Heartache In The West
Without Her
Women Of The Night
I'd Be Talking All The Time
$15 Draw
Wine, Women And Loud Happy Songs
I Wouldn't Have You Any Other Way
Loser's Lounge
Waiting
Silent Homecoming

Ringo
I'm The Greatest
Hold On
Photograph
Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond)
You're Sixteen
Oh My My
Step Lightly
Six O'Clock
Devil Woman
You And Me (Babe)

Goodnight Vienna
Goodnight Vienna
Occapella
Oo-Wee
Husbands And Wives
Snookeroo
All By Myself
Call Me
No No Song
Only You (And You Alone)
Easy For Me
Goodnight Vienna (Reprise)

Ringo's Rotogravure
A Dose Of Rock'n Roll
Hey Baby
Pure Gold
Cryin'
You Don't Know Me At All
Cookin' (In The Kitchen Of Love)
I'll Still Love You
This Be Called A Song
Las Brisas
Lady Gaye
Spooky Weirdness

Ringo the 4th
Drowning In The Sea Of Love
Tango All Night
Wings
Gave It All Up
Out On The Streets
Can She Do It Like She Dances
Sneaking Sally Through The Alley
It's No Secret
Gypsies In Flight
Simple Love Song

Bad Boy
Who Needs A Heart
Bad Boy
Lipstrick Traces (On A Cigarette)
Heart On My Sleeve
Where Did Our Love Go
Hard Times
Tonight
Monkey See-Monkey Do
Old Time Relovin'
A Man Like Me

Stop and Smell the Roses
Private Property
Wrack My Brain
Drumming Is My Madness
Attention
Stop And Take The Time To Smell The Roses
Dead Giveaway
You Belong To Me
Sure To Fall
Nice Way
Back Off Boogaloo

Old Wave
In My Car
Hopeless
Alibi
Be My Baby
She's About A Mover
I Keep Forgettin'
Picture Show Life
As Far As We Can Go
Everybody's In A Hurry But Me
Going Down

Time Takes Time
Weight Of The World
Don't Know A Thing About Love
Don't Go Where The Road Don't Go
Golden Blunders
All In The Name Of Love
After All These Years
I Don't Believe You
Runaways
In A Heart Beat
What Goes Around

Vertical Man
One
What In The...World
Mindfield
King Of Broken Hearts
Love Me Do
Vertical Man
Drift Away
I Was Walkin'
La De Da
Without Understanding
I'll Be Fine Anywhere
Puppet
I'm Yours

I Wanna Be Santa Claus
Come On Christmas, Christmas Come On
Winter Wonderland
I Wanna Be Santa Claus
The Little Drummer Boy
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Christmas Eve
The Christmas Dance
Christmas Time Is Here Again
Blue Christmas
Dear Santa
White Christmas
Pax Um Biscum (Peace Be With You)

Ringo Rama
Eye To Eye
Missouri Loves Company
Instant Amnesia
Memphis In Your Mind
Never Without You
Imagine Me There
I Think Therefore I Rock N Roll
Trippin' On My Own Tears
Write One For Me
What Love Wants To Be
Lover First, Ask Questions Later
Elizabeth Reigns
English Garden
I Really Love Her

Choose Love
Fading In Fading Out
Give Me Back The Beat
Oh My Lord
Hard To Be True
Some People
Wrong All The Time
Don't Hang Up
Choose Love
Me And You
Satisfied
The Turnaround
Free Drinks

Liverpool 8
Liverpool 8
Think About You
For Love
Now That She's Gone Away
Gone Are The Days
Give It A Try
Tuff Love
Harry's Song
Pasodobles
If It's Love That You Want
Love Is
R U Ready

Y Not
Fill In The Blanks
Peace Dream
The Other Side Of Liverpool
Walk With You
Time
Everyone Wins
Mystery Of The Night
Can't Do It Wrong
Y Not
Who's Your Daddy

Ringo 2012
Anthem
Wings
Think It Over
Samba
Rock Island Line
Step Lightly
Wonderful
In Liverpool
Slow Down

Postcards from Paradise
Rory And The Hurricanes
You Bring The Party Down
Bridges
Postcards From Paradise
Right Side Of The Road
Not Looking Back
Bamboula
Island In The Sun
Touch And Go
Confirmation
Let Love Lead

Give More Love
We're On The Road Again
Laughable
Show Me The Way
Speed Of Sound
Standing Still
King Of The Kingdom
Electricity
So Wrong For So Long
Shake It Up
Give More Love
Back Off Boogaloo
Don't Pass Me By
You Can't Fight Lightning
Photograph

and revised non-album tracklist

non-album tracks
Coochy Coochy
It Don’t Come Easy
Early 1970
Back Off Boogaloo
Blindman
Photograph
Down and Out
The Official BBC Children In Need Medley
You Never Know
I Wish I Was a Powerpuff Girl
When You Wish Upon a Star

No Scouse Mouse?

those are on an album

(listed under the "with Other Artists" category, since it's a soundtrack featuring other performers and is not a Ringo solo album)

I'm very interested to see how the Ringo stuff fares.

for the uninitiated approaching my list, the most defensible subset from the POV of songcraft and effort would be something like Single Pigeon, Put It There, Baby's Request, Arrow Through Me, Loveliest Thing, Hope of Deliverance, and No Other Baby... with Waterspout and Magneto as slight glimpses into a weirder world. but if your response to the Macca you've heard is that he's too cloying and sentimental, you might want to punt most of those and go for Secret Friend (unless you find his experimental/electronic tendencies facile) or Oh Woman, Oh Why (unless you find his "rock" mode affected).

currently starting on a ringo deep dive with Sentimental Journey. it's nice so far! can't imagine it satisfying beatles fans (you want ringo to rock out a little) or standards/big-band fans (to quote mst3k, "wow, they don't call john carradine 'the voice' for nothing!") but even if it kind of sounds like your genial uncle pasted over a very nicely-recorded band who he never once met, it's still warm and he's clearly got a smile on his face all throughout... i mean, it's lovable old ringo! good for him for trying his hand.

I started to listen through your list yikes Mumbo is like a shitty Beach Boys outtake (sans vocals, but that hammering 8th note piano style is total Brian Wilson)

ringo's double-tracked vocal on "bye bye blackbird" is pretty winning

hahahaha yeah I made the post-smile beach boys/macca comparison a bit back and it makes more and more sense to me as i think about it.

Big Barn Bed is pretty good but god I find this creepy for some reason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQzVJlLpriY

70s BW and Macca are p interesting compliments of each other - at opposite ends of the success/functionality scale and yet their approaches to their musical output are kind of similar: stoned, slapdash, occasionally brilliant, often mind-numbingly stupid, casually unpredictable, largely shadows of their former selves. But tbh I prefer BW's output more just because he is so much farther *out* than Macca, and there is a real emotional core to a lot of his stuff (the "tragic figure" arc of his life def figures into this) that Macca rarely dips into. Even when BW is writing stupid throwaways about Johnny Carson, they still contribute to this peak into what feels like an actual, lived in life. Macca is usually more opaque, it's all just goofy smoke and mirrors and platitudes about how much he loves Linda or whatever.

His vocal on "No Other Baby" is I guess what boomer critics had in mind when they longed for a Paul McCartney who used the gifts displayed in the Beatles.

I like this song that I'd never heard before today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSS2ABconDg

shakey, that's a solid summary and I don't disagree with any of it. and yet I have always liked paul's stuff more! maybe i'm just more oriented to his melodic/arranging sensibility or the sense of variety and polish - stuff always sounds more *finished* and i do think there's a greater range of musical territory (all within the pop/rock megagenre obv). i also grew up with more of paul's stuff so that probably shaped my taste as much as my taste informs which i'd rather listen to most days.

meanwhile on ringo-watch: Beaucoups of Blues is another very pleasant listen so far! Nashville Skyline is the inevitable comparison but this feels less idiosyncratic/unique than that - Ringo's voice and the material he ginned up with the band fit very, very comfortably into the early 70s country/AM-gold interzone. he's obviously way more at home dolefully explaining that someone gave him the fastest growing heartache in the West than he is doing "night and day" or even than he is belting out a rocker like "back off boogaloo." i kinda wish that after that initial wave of early hits he'd just decided to be a country artist, but maybe these listens will change my mind...

if Nashville Skyline is an homage to Lefty Frizzell (which is how I hear it) who is Beaucoups of Blues an homage to...? Buck Owens? (I've never listened to it tbc)

Morse Moose and the Grey Goose maybe the most "Paul McCartney album track" song title ever. all the theatrics and drama of a "Live and Let Die,"

ahh, the dramatic build was used in the Twin Freaks version of Coming Up! tyvm for this pointer, Doc Casino.

BOB is solid, and, yeah, Conway Twitty should have worked with Ringo.

Oh man that's an inspired pairing

Missouri Loves Company

*massive eye roll at Ringo*

Single Pigeon = man this also reminds me of post-Smile Brian Wilson, a pretty but fairly simple piano progression with dumb lyrics about a bird outside his window. at least until the horns briefly come in, which have a very Beatle-y arrangement.

not bad, but slight

RRS is a lousy album though.

when I said upthread that I can listen to McCartney albums and enjoy them while they're on and then not be able to remember a single thing about them as soon as they stop playing, RRS is what I had in mind. Totally forgettable.

I wrote this about "My Love." I love Rob Sheffield's theory that Paul wrote it out of envy for George's "Something."

er, this.

Morse Moose and the Grey Goose = omg the Animal Collective buzzing high-pitched synth running through this whole thing is so fucking irritating, what a horrible sound.

Paul could be actively irritating in a way the other Beatles' solo works never were (at their worst, they were boring and flaccid).

But this just makes me want to stab something, it's a sonic crime.

Temporary Secretary also quickly goes from cute novelty to actively irritating, although there it's the chirping refrain that really grates.

re: ringo's homage - i'd trust anybody itt's judgment more than mine as to what styles or performers ringo is going for on this record - i own a few classic country LPs but i don't really know the genre!

loving these classically shakey-esque track reviews. can't believe i got you to listen to "morse moose and the grey goose."

giving a thumbs up to beaucoups of blues. will keep these first two ringo albums in rotation and recommend any particular standout tracks if they come to me. moving on now to his "rock" albums which have always looked worrisomely "i had me own albums to do, peace and love" to me, but i could easily believe they have some gems. ringo opens with the lennon-penned "i'm the greatest," the silliness of which i've always appreciated, but it's like 10 BPM too slow or something, just kind of plodding. what happened to his instincts as a drummer (the thing he's actually the greatest at)? my fear has always been that these next few LPs are mostly like that, but we'll see....

i had me own albums to do, peace and love

lol this is probably a little too on the nose...

Put It There = this is pretty good, it's a sturdy melody and actually reminds me a bit of XTC (yes I know that's backwards) but that may be the late 80s production sheen of chorused guitars more than anything then else. I don't love the sound of it but with a slightly different arrangement/production style I can see it being quite affecting. Of course the song is then promptly ruined by the Hello/Goodbye callback coda.

I don't know! The song is way too brief to criticize (Paul produced it himself btw); I don't rate it.

No "Cut Me Some Slack" for Paul McCartney?

critics have been doing it since 1970

"Cut Me Some Slack" was (I believe) only performed live, that once? So I left it off, as I'm excluding live stuff.

if a studio version was released somewhere, feel free to vote for it.

Yeah there's not much I'd salvage from Ringo's s/t. Despite the inclusion of a song called "Step Lightly" and a bunch of great musicians, it mostly all sounds like they're on downers and out of ideas. Stunning to read that Rolling Stone found it the best solo Beatle record released by November 1973, and that only Goodbye Yellow Brick Road kept it from #1 in the US. "Photograph"'s status as a big hit has always sort of mystified me - it's again, doughy and sluggish, but if I imagine it a little faster, the boringness of the melody just looms larger. I mean it's okay but it's really the same thing the whole way through, four or five notes, dah dah dah dah DAH dah duh... say what you will about Paul but he would quit or fall asleep halfway through if you tried to get him to sing this. "It Don't Come Easy" at least has some big, ear-grabbing hooks and real Ringo-y drum fills but I think it'd be better without the horns piled all over it - doesn't really make you sound like a scrappy hard-time dues-payer when you're beaming it out from a Vegas stage. Rounding out the singles, "Oh My My" at least feels a good fit for Ringo's persona, but that's all I can really say about it.

"Early 1970" is the real keeper imo - limber, sincere, stripped down to the country-western sound that worked so well last time, and evidently Ringo is the kind of guy who writes better tunes and lyrics when there are things he's actually feeling and wants to get on record. I could put that on a ballot. "Sunshine Life For Me" has a momentary flash of interest when George's vocal line comes in towards the end. "You're Sixteen," though an icky choice of material, is what the whole album should have been - brighter, more uptempo, with Ringo singing at the top end of his register rather than the wooden bottom... he's done a standards album, a country album, okay, do the album of American Graffiti soundtrack covers. "Devil Woman" has a flash of a grittier, Stonesier energy or something but it's buried under the same good-time boogie horns as everything else.

the album version of Cut Me Some Slack was live-in-studio, no? so as valid as lots of early Beatles songs, and probably loads of '70s stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_City:_Real_to_Reel

"Put It There" does not have a "Hello Goodbye" coda!!! That's the stupid music video version which I explicitly cautioned everyone not to listen to!