Recollection Volume 6 – Vertical Man

Recollection is a project to review my record collection. I will listen to an album I own and review it. The album will be chosen randomly by computron. Today computron chooses… 

Album: Vertical Man
Artist: Ringo Starr
Released: 1998
Format(s) I own it on: CD

Oh god.

Back in 1998, The Beatles were riding high on the post-Anthology wave. They made a huge TV event out of a documentary on their career and released three double albums of rarities and outtakes. Included were two new songs “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love,” both of which did quite well in the charts. It was the motherflippin’ Beatles.

Ringo Starr, famed Beatle drummer, released this record of new, mostly terrible, songs.

Amongst them, Starr felt the need to perform a cover of The Beatles song “Love Me Do.” Sigh. Okay. “Love Me Do” is actually an enjoyable song when The Beatles performed it, but I feel that Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields put it perfectly when he reviewed the album for Time Out Magazine, “Even his version of Lennon-McCartney’s “Love Me Do” only points up the insipid lyrics.” It’s true. Somehow Lennon & McCartney made “Love, love me do, you know I love you” repeated ad nauseum enjoyable… Starr does not repeat this success.

Yet, the list of credits on this album is incredible. Just look at the tags for this entry. It’s kind of incredible. And yet… we have the results that we have.

Highlights

“La De Da” is actually a decent and catchy single.

Lowlights

“I Was Walking,” “Love Me Do,” “Mindfield,” “Puppet” are all tedious.

4 (67%) | 2 (33%)

2 (33%) |  2.33 (39%) | 1.66 (28%)

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