Every song by The Beatles with Ringo Starr on lead vocals
While he might always be wrongly regarded as the weak link in the Beatles when it came to taking on the role of lead vocals, drummer Ringo Starr was still afforded a decent amount of opportunity to show off his worth behind the microphone. There are a number of his songs that stand up alongside some of the group’s most notorious hits, and there are also a few lost gems that don’t often get as much attention, but across the 11 songs that he contributed lead vocals to in the band’s discography, the other members could always rely on Ringo to provide some of his impish charm to a track when they needed it.
His debut appearance on vocals came as early as their debut album, Please Please Me, and in an effort to make up the numbers on the record and capitalise on the demand for a full Beatles LP, the band opted to record a handful of covers from their live repertoire, which included the Shirelles track ‘Boys’ that Starr had previously sung during his time with previous band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Recorded and committed to tape in just a single take, it isn’t the most glowing example of what he was capable of, and there were a number of question marks surrounding his ability from producer George Martin in the early days of the group.
He would follow up with ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, a track written by Paul McCartney for their second album With the Beatles, which also became a hit for the Rolling Stones shortly after its release. There were also a couple of covers of Carl Perkins numbers that made their way onto Beatles releases in the early years that Starr would lend his vocals to, with the Long Tall Sally EP cut ‘Matchbox’ and the Beatles For Sale album track ‘Honey Don’t’ both featuring the drummer as the lead singer on the track.
By the time the Beatles came around to recording their fifth album, Help!, in 1965, covers were beginning to become less prominent on their studio albums, and the rendition of Buck Owens and the Buckaroos’ 1963 hit ‘Act Naturally’ would be the final example of a cover sung by Starr on a Beatles record, and the final cover that the band recorded full-stop. The next song he would take up vocal duties on would be the Rubber Soul track ‘What Goes On’, which saw the drummer continue the trend of performing on the more lighthearted and whimsical tracks on the Beatles’ records but also saw him earn his first ever songwriting credit on a Beatles release, having penned the lyrics to go alongside McCartney’s tune.
The next two songs to feature Starr’s untrained yet dulcet tones were arguably his two most famous efforts, with ‘Yellow Submarine’ being the token Starr track from Revolver and ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ filling the same role on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The naivety of the former song has earned the song both fans and critics, with some lampooning the childlike quality of the song, while others enjoy its simplicity and consider it one of Starr’s highlights. However, the latter, for which Starr adopts the persona of Billy Shears as the lead vocalist in the concept album’s eponymous group, is definitely his greatest vocal performance with the group, and despite having been written by McCartney, it continues to be a staple of Starr’s live performances to this day.
Given the album’s length, The White Album is a rarity in the sense that it is the only album to feature two songs with Starr on lead vocals, with him taking the reins on both ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ and album closer ‘Good Night’. ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ was the first example of a song with Starr on vocals that he had written without any external assistance from his bandmates, and while it had existed as early as 1964, it took four years for the band to include the song on any album, having dramatically altered the original sound in the production stages. ‘Good Night’, a John Lennon composition written for his son Julian, is a tender lullaby that Starr offers his voice to, yet is a rarity in the band’s output in the sense that no Beatle plays an instrument on the track – something only ‘Eleanor Rigby’ can also lay claim to.
The final song Starr sang and penned for the Fab Four was the Abbey Road track ‘Octopus’s Garden’, which he had a small amount of assistance from George Harrison. While it might seem like another buoyant tune from the drummer, it came at a period of great difficulty for the band, with members constantly threatening to quit during the album’s sessions and Starr even temporarily finding himself taking a leave of absence from the group. That being said, there’s little to suggest a fractured relationship between members from the jovial mood of the track, and it’s a perfect swan song for Ringo to have offered to the group as a final celebration of his upbeat contributions to their output.
The 11 songs by The Beatles with Ringo Starr on lead vocals:
- ‘Boys’
- ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’
- ‘Matchbox’
- ‘Honey Don’t’
- ‘Act Naturally’
- ‘What Goes On’
- ‘Yellow Submarine’
- ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’
- ‘Don’t Pass Me By’
- ‘Good Night’
- ‘Octopus’s Garden’
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