Ringo Starr's "Crooked Boy" EP: Sometimes smaller is better
Beyonce’s “Cowboy Carter”: Twenty-seven songs. Seventy-eight minutes of music. Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department”: Thirty-one songs. Two hours of music.
That’s a lot of music to listen to. It’s a huge investment of time to hear one of those albums. If you want to dig into either of them, you’ll have to listen more than a couple of times to find the songs that you like/love. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing; but with people’s busy lives, it’s hard to find the time to do this.
Ringo Starr has a different idea. Since 2021, he has been putting out EPs. Each one has four songs and you can listen to them in less than twenty minutes. It makes perfect sense. He realizes that very few people are going to sit around and listen to an hour or more of his music, but we can easily make time for a few short songs.
His latest EP is “Crooked Boy.” It’s written and produced by Linda Perry, who has worked with Pink, Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera. It’s interesting how the songs are produced. Perry does music in her studio which includes her playing some guitar, the bass and backing vocals. She then sends the tracks to Ringo, who adds in the vocals and the drums. It gets mixed and voila—you have an EP
My favorite of the four is “February Sky”, which has some excellent driving guitar work. “Crooked Boy” drives home the peace and love theme that Ringo is famous for. You can almost feel him throwing his hand up in the air and making the V peace sign.
Ringo and his All-Starr band are getting ready to start a Spring tour, which includes a Las Vegas residency at The Venetian Hotel. Don’t expect to hear any of these tunes in concert. Starr has made clear that he knows which songs his fans come out to hear him play—and that’s what you’re going to get.
If you want to hear the tunes on “Crooked Boy”, hit up the site where you listen to new music (I found it on YouTube). It’ll be worth twelve minutes of your time.