Long Long Road

As the Beatle who ushered covers of Carl Perkins and Buck Owens standards into the early Fab Four canon, Ringo Starr has always been a country bumpkin at heart, so it makes perfect sense for him to stage a full-circle move back to the genre six decades later and indulge his most extravagant Nashville fantasies. <i>Long Long Road</i> is the sequel to his 2025 Music City sojourn, <i>Look Up</i>, and once again sees him getting a little help from his producer friends T Bone Burnett and Daniel Tashian alongside new-school Americana stars Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings. Ringo’s easy-going croon is a perfect fit for countrypolitan cowpoke laments like “I Don’t See Me in Your Eyes Anymore” and the title track (featuring Sheryl Crow), where his wry vocal tone walks the fine line between self-deprecating humour and genuine tear-in-your-beer pathos, while dust-kicking bluesy romps like “Baby Don’t Go” and “It’s Been Too Long” let him flex his rock ’n’ roll muscle in between twangy licks. And even though <i>Long Long Road</i> finds Ringo thousands of miles away from Liverpool both physically and spiritually, the St. Vincent-assisted “Choose Love” injects a little <i>Sgt. Pepper</i> swirliness into its rootsy strut, complemented by lyrical nods to “The Long and Winding Road” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” to enhance the ’60s-flashback effect.