10 Songs That Prove Ringo Star’s Solo Career Is Better Than You Think
5. Wrack My Brain
After two commercial flops in a row, Ringo’s 1981 album Stop And Smell The Roses had a difficult birth. Record label Portrait withdrew their support halfway through recording and the planned inclusion of two John Lennon songs was scuppered by Lennon’s death in 1980.
George Harrison took back one of his own contributions to repurpose as his Lennon memorial All Those Years Ago. It was a touching and worthy tribute but another blow to Ringo’s album.
Despite help from Paul McCartney, Harry Nilsson, Stephen Stills and Ronnie Wood the album suffers from a cluttered production and fails to transcend its troubled recording.
A particular low point is Drumming Is My Madness, whose pedestrian, mid-tempo beat sounds more like, “drumming is the sanity by which I pay my bills.”
The albums one redeeming track is Harrison’s other offering, Wrack My Brain. The catchy song is full of George’s trademark dour wit, with a lyric about feeling out of touch with his audience and struggling to come up with “Something you’d enjoy as much as TV.” Unfortunately the lyric would prove fairly prophetic. The single limped into the lower reaches of the charts and no Starr Hasn’t had a hit since.