Is “you were in a car crash and you lost your hair” the worst lyric The Beatles ever wrote?
Ringo Starr gets a lot of flak for supposedly being the weak link in The Beatles, and when you’re up against the calibre of musicianship that he had to compete with, it’s often hard to find yourself in disagreement with this sentiment, no matter how unwarranted it is.
Yes, besting John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison is no mean feat, but just because the drum parts that he contributed to the band were occasionally viewed as rudimentary and simplistic, it doesn’t mean his feel for the instrument and inventiveness when it came to creating rhythms wasn’t incredibly novel then and now. As far as drumming goes, Starr was more than competent – hell, I’d even go so far as to suggest that he’s an underrated genius.
However, this compliment only stretches a certain distance, and only covers his ability as a drummer, because with all of the best will in the world, Starr is not a songwriter. You can be a staunch defender of the Fab Four’s resident whipping boy and his credentials behind the kit, but a concession has to stand in the way of him ever being lauded as having the same prowess with the pen.
Apologies if you thought I was going to spare him from scorn, but no matter what Starr seems to do, he opens himself up for ridicule. While it’s amusing to poke fun at the fact that he has peculiar aversions to pizza and receiving fanmail, yet likes posting questionable images of his feet on social media, we’re here to talk about his credentials – or lack of – as a songwriter.
Now, he may have released almost as many solo albums as Paul McCartney, but that doesn’t mean that those were stacked with hits, and during his time with The Beatles, he’s only credited as having written two songs by himself. ‘Octopus’s Garden’ isn’t that bad, which is to say, it’s the better of the two, but The White Album plays host to ‘Don’t Pass Me By’, the unfortunate first foray into unaccompanied songwriting from Starr.
The honky-tonk piano and bluegrass violins are grating to say the least, and coming directly after ‘Rocky Raccoon’ in the double album’s tracklist, this musical accompaniment immediately leads you to think that the record has nosedived off the edge of the precipice and descended into novelty territory after its earlier flirtations with humour.
However, while the other jovial tracks on The White Album have plenty of charm, ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ is tainted not only by its dreadful backing track, but its even more questionable lyrics, the worst of which is: “you were in a car crash and you lost your hair”.
It’s not like the line has any relevance to the rest of the song, but then again, it’s not like any of the song is particularly coherent in the first place. At no other point does he mention the person he is pining over suffering from traumatic alopecia, and its placement in between lines about how much he longs to be with someone else is so alarmingly out of place that it completely takes you away from being able to concentrate on anything else that Starr says in the remainder of the song.
No, you can’t say that the other three members went without delivering clunky lyricism over the course of the band’s dozen albums, and you could even argue that some of the worst offenders from each respective member also sit within The White Album’s 30-song sprawl, but unfortunately for Starr, this is most certainly the hottest contender to take the sorry title of being the worst line ever released in a Beatles song.
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