Starr returns to country; Wilson goes deluxe

Friday, January 10, 2025 – Ringo Starr released a country music album, "Look Up," today via Universal. The 11-song set was produced and co-written by T Bone Burnett.The former Beatle recorded the songs this year in Nashville and Los Angeles. Nine of the songs were written or co-written by Burnett, one by Billy Swan and the other co-written by Starr and Bruce Sugar. Starr sang and played drums on all the songs and co-wrote the closer, "Thankful," featuring Alison Krauss. Billy Strings, Larkin Poe, Lucius and Molly Tuttle contributed as well. Starr performed and wrote numerous country and country-tinged songs throughout his years with The Beatles (i.e. "Act Naturally," "What Goes On," "Don't Pass Me By") as well as with the earlier Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, and recorded a country album, "Beaucoups of Blues," in 1970 as his second solo album. Starr's new album comes after a chance meeting with Burnett at an event in Los Angeles in 2022 (the two had first met in the 1970s), where Starr asked Burnett to write a song for an EP he was recording. Burnett returned with nine songs, all in a country vein, which put Starr on a path to record "Look Up," his first country album in more than 50 years and his first full-length album since 2019.

Stephen Wilson Jr. releases a deluxe edition of his critically-acclaimed debut double album, "son of dad," via Big Loud Records. The LP features two new tracks taken from his viral Live at the Print Shop performance: the dedication to his late father "I'm A Song" and a reinterpretation of Ben E. King's "Stand By Me," as well as 10 acoustic versions of songs like "Cuckoo," "Year To Be Young 1994," "Father's Son" and "Grief is Only Love."