Starr Struck: Best of Ringo Starr (1989)
1. Wrack My Brain 2. In My Car 3. Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love) 4. I Keep Forgettin' 5. Hard Times 6. Hey! Baby 7. Attention 8. A Dose of Rock & Roll 9. Who Needs a Heart 10.Private Property 11.Can She Do It Like she Dances 12.Heart on My Sleeve 13.Sure to Fall (In Love With You) 14.Hopeless 15.You Belong To Me 16.She's About a Mover
The absence of the words “greatest hits” from the title is telling—and mercifully honest. Starr Struck: Best of Ringo Starr, Vol. 2 makes no pretense of being a hit parade. In fact, there are no hits here at all, and the compilation’s source material, spanning the years 1976 to 1983, has long been considered the nadir of Ringo’s post-Beatle output. This was the era of dwindling sales, discontinued contracts, and in the case of 1983’s Old Wave, no U.S. release whatsoever. One suspects the only label interested was the one he applied to his suitcase.
And yet, for all its bargain-bin aura and lack of commercial credentials, Starr Struck is not without modest appeal. The tracks—culled from a particularly maligned corner of the catalogue—are, surprisingly, well chosen. Gone are the more embarrassing lapses into forced genre-hopping or novelty indulgence. What’s left is a reasonably listenable sampler of late-’70s and early-’80s Ringo, cleaned up and repackaged with just enough polish to justify its existence.
To be clear, continuity is not the selling point here. The compilation plays more like a shuffled deck than a coherent album experience, and any semblance of artistic arc is purely accidental. But for those curious enough to dig beyond the standard solo Beatles fare, this might come as a minor revelation. Ringo’s so-called “bad years” were never truly catastrophic—merely unfashionable and undercooked—and when his better moments are gathered together like this, they reveal a journeyman artist capable of more than just nostalgia-driven coasting.
No, this isn’t essential. But it is oddly enjoyable, and for the curious few who have worn out their copy of Ringo and want to know what happened after the applause faded, this offers a surprisingly palatable answer.