Ringo Starr Going Country (Again) on Upcoming Album “Look Up”.

Ringo Starr's first new full-length album in six years, I look upwill find the former Beatles drummer and solo star taking to the country again. The 11-track album of original songs produced and written by T-Bone Burnett is set for release on January 10 and was prefaced on Friday (October 18) by the tear-in-your-tea ballad Time On My Hands. “

“I've loved Ringo Starr and his playing, his singing and his aesthetic for as long as I can (or care) to remember,” Grammy-winning producer/songwriter Burnett, 76, said in a statement. “He changed the way every drummer after him played with his inventive approach to the instrument. And, he always sang killer rockabilly, as well as being a heartbreaking ballad singer. Making this music with him was like the realization of a 60-year-old dream. None of the work I've done in a long life in music would have happened if it weren't for him and his band. Among other things, this album is a way for me to say thank you for everything he has given me and us.”

Burnett wrote or co-wrote nine of the songs on Starr's 21st solo album, on which the peace and love advocate sang and played drums. One song written by Billy Swan and another co-written by Starr and Bruce Sugar. According to a release announcing the project, Starr co-wrote the album's closer, “Thankful,” which features one of Burnett's past collaborators, bluegrass singer/fiddler Alison Krauss.

Burnett also enlisted a few other Nashville ringers for the project, including Billy Strings, Larkin Poe, Lucious and Molly Tuttle. Although pop and R&B stars dipping their toes in the country pool has become spontaneous over the past year, with deviations from the likes of Beyoncé, Post Malone, Ed Sheeran, MGK and Lana Del Rey, the release noted that Starr's appreciation of all things twangy goes back more than half a century.

“I've always loved country music. And when I asked T Bone to write me a song, I didn't even think it was going to be a country song – but of course it was and it was so beautiful,” Starr said of his collaboration with his friend. more than four decades Burnett, which was prompted by a chance meeting in Los Angeles in 2022, where the former Beatle asked Burnett to write a song for an EP he was working on at the time.

“I was making EPs at the time so I thought we'd do a country EP – but when he brought me nine songs I knew we had to make an album!” Starr added of the Burnett-penned tracks that all had a country feel to them. atmosphere. “And I'm very glad we did. I want to thank and send Peace & Love to T Bone and all the great musicians who helped make this record happen. It was a joy to make and I hope it's a joy to listen to.”

“Time on My Hands” finds Starr wistfully lamenting the loss of a true love over pedal steel and softly strummed acoustic guitar, his subtle laconic vocals taking center stage in the ballad about what got away . “I used to have a true love/ Everything was fine/ But now she found a new love/ She's not mine anymore,” she sings.

From the Beatles songs he performed and wrote, including 'Act Naturally', 'What Goes On' and 'Don't Pass Me By', to his second solo album in 1970 Beaucoups of Blues,” Starr has been immersed in the genre since his early, pre-Beatles days playing in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. In fact, the release adds, Starr was so enamored with country and blues as a teenager that he tried to emigrate from London to Texas in his younger years after learning that blues great Lightnin' Hopkins lived there.

Starr's first new full-length album since 2019 What's my name?will receive a fitting country welcome on January 14-15, 2025, when the singer/drummer headlines the legendary Ryman Auditorium. tickets for the show will go on sale on October 25.

See the full tracklist and cover art for I look up below.