The album, produced by T Bone Burnett, features 11 original songs, and collaborations with country artists such as Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, and sister duo Larkin Poe. With Burnett’s extensive roots in the American country scene, ‘Look Up’ aims to recapture a more traditional sound, harking back to the artists that inspired Beatles’ hits such as ‘Act Naturally’ and ‘Don’t Pass Me By’. “Country music became pop with a pedal steel,” Starr explained when interviewed by the Associated Press last month. 

The album’s creative journey began with a single track from Burnett, which then formed the basis of an EP, before eventually expanding to a full-length album. “I love that you can take a right turn, and it turns into a really good couple of days,” Starr said.

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Honouring the home of country and western music, Starr will perform two shows at the Ryman Auditorium on January 15 and 16. He teased the upcoming performances on Instagram with a photo of the white Stetson hat from the ‘Look Up’ album cover perched on a fence outside the venue. 

While Starr’s fans have shown enthusiasm for his country pivot, wider reactions to the album have been mixed. On the Beatles subreddit, some described Starr’s voice as a “natural fit” for the genre. In contrast, the r/CountryMusicStuff subreddit expressed less enthusiasm, with one user commenting that the album’s features “aren’t enough to stop it from falling flat.”

Comment byu/NoYeezyAtWeezyHeezy from discussion inCountryMusicStuff

Critics have also offered praise without falling into ex-Beatle sycophancy. The Telegraph awarded the album three stars, while Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield gave it three and a half, saying, “‘Look Up’ is the sound of Ringo being himself, the least jaded rock star in the universe, which is exactly what we want from this wise old sage.”

Supported by two singles in 2024—’Time On My Hands’, released in October, and ‘Thankful’, released in November—’Look Up’ also includes a music video for its title track, which Starr promoted on Instagram. Despite the album’s new material, Starr has yet to perform any songs from ‘Look Up’ live, making the Nashville shows that bit more exciting for fans, with tickets available here.

While doing interviews to promote the new album, Starr used the opportunity to warn artists, listeners, and those in government, about the danger posed by AI in music. This comes amid the UK Government’s own issues surrounding copyright and AI data mining, and has been addressed by fellow Beatle Paul McCartney too.

With ‘Look Up’, Starr embraces a genre that first inspired him decades ago. Whether lauded or critiqued, the album is a testament to the King of Peace and Love’s energy and spirit at 84.

The 2021 recording of the 1962 classic was produced by T Bone Burnett in Los Angeles and recorded directly onto an acetate record, called an Ionic Recording, which is considered to produce the most superior sound money can buy on a typical record player.

T Bone Burnett has stressed the exclusivity of the pressing and insisted it’s purpose as a rejection of mass consumerism, recently telling Variety “I think it is important to know for people who are concerned about the exclusivity of what we are doing. An Ionic Original is not a ‘copy.’ It is an original recording. We are not contriving scarcity. This is actually scarce. It is a unique, handmade, original recording. We have all been conditioned to accept the terms of and react to things from the frame of mass production. This is not that.”

Burnett has also commented on how highly he prides this particular recording, going as far as to describe it as the “the best record I’ve ever made in my life“, a pretty wild statement considering the renowned producers previous feats. He has won multiple Grammy’s and accolades in his illustrious career so far, writing and producing scores for films like “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, “Cold Mountain”, “Walk the Line”, and “Crazy Heart”, as well as contributing to the work of artists such as Robert Plant, Counting Crows, Sam Phillips, and Roy Orbison. So to put this to the top of his list of achievements is quite something and a mark of how passionately he stands by the project and it’s extraordinary price tag.

“This is a full rebellion against mass consumerism,” Burnett concluded with Variety. “It’s not that I don’t want people to hear it. I think this is the best record I’ve ever made in my life, so I want everybody to hear it. For my ego and my sense of ‘I would like everybody to like me,’ this is a sacrifice. I mean, you heard it. Bob sounds good. The band sounds good. The song’s great. And I have to say, I think it’s the best thing that I’ve ever been involved in. It’s the best singer, the best song, great musicians, the sound is killer. I’ll say this: I’ve never done anything better, to be sure.”

One lucky, and apparently very wealthy, listener has walked away with the pressing, being the only person bar a few members of the press granted access to listen to it, it is now down to he or she, their identity being undisclosed, whether they will ever let anyone else tune in. Being a big Dylan fan myself, I hope for a leak one day, it feels inevitable in this day and age, but the purist in me also hopes that it will forever hang on the mystery buyers wall, a temptation to whomever gazes upon it.

Flash forward nearly 60 years and you’ll find the legendary producer and songwriter T Bone Burnett, who used to play guitar in Dylan’s band, teaming up with his old friend to record a brand new version of “Blowin’ In The Wind” to launch a new physical music format he dubs the “Ionic Original”. The new technology looks to be a hybrid of CDs and Vinyl and has been described as “The pinnacle of sound” by it’s creator Burnett. Going on to describe how the new medium would work in a recent press release noted by Pitchfork, he said that “It is lacquer painted onto an aluminium disc, with a spiral etched into it by music. This painting, however, has the additional quality of containing that music, which can be heard by putting a stylus into the spiral and spinning it”. 

The new version of the song will be released as a one-of-a-kind disc at a Christie’s auction on July 7th 2022 in London, and is currently estimated to go for a bidding price of £600,000 – 1000,000. If someone said you can’t put a price on great music then tell that to the person looking to claim ownership of this unique piece of musical memorabilia later in the summer. The whoppingly lucrative auction is set to be an “Ionic Original” debut and the first time Dylan has tracked the song in 60 years. Fitting in nicely, if ten years short, with the Queens Platinum Jubilee, it is a cause for celebration that Bob Dylan and his mercurial talent should be back in the studio recording this most cherished material once again. I for one am looking forward to hearing how his vocal sounds years on, having walked down so many roads, and how well he teams up with Burnett, who despite a long history of musical collaboration, has never actually produced for the artist before. I doubt there should be much call for concern though, having written and produced the Grammy Award winning soundtracks to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Cold Mountain, Walk The Line, and Crazy Heart I expect the results will be magical.

A previously unheard Bob Dylan track will appear on the soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ upcoming film, ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’

The film, from the creative sibling duo behind award-winning pictures ‘Fargo’, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ and ‘No Country for Old Men’, stars ‘Robin Hood‘ star Oscar Isaac as a singer in the 1960’s New York folk scene, and has been tipped as a major contender for the upcoming Oscars. Carey Mulligan, John Goodman and Justin Timberlake also star.

The soundtrack, produced by T-Bone Burnett in conjuction with Mumford and Sons frontman Marcus Mumford, consists of a mixture of traditional and original songs from the film. The Dylan number, entitled, ‘Farewell’ was originally recorded for his famed 1964 album, ‘The Times, They Are A’Changin’.

‘’Inside Llewyn Davis’ will be released in the UK on 24^th January 2014.

The soundtrack listing is as follows:

1. ‘Hang Me, Oh Hang Me’ (Traditional; Arranged by Oscar Isaac and T Bone Burnett) – Oscar Isaac
2. ‘Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)’ (Traditional; Arranged by Marcus Mumford, Oscar Isaac, and T Bone Burnett) – Oscar Isaac and Marcus Mumford
3. ‘The Last Thing on My Mind’ (Tom Paxton) – Stark Sands with Punch Brothers
4. ‘Five Hundred Miles’ (Hedy West) – Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, and Stark Sands
5. ‘Please Mr. Kennedy’ (Ed Rush, George Cromarty, T Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake, Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen) – Justin Timberlake, Oscar Isaac, and Adam Driver
6. ‘Green, Green Rocky Road’ (Len Chandler and Robert Kaufman) – Oscar Isaac
7. ‘The Death of Queen Jane’ (Traditional; Arranged by Oscar Isaac and T Bone Burnett) – Oscar Isaac
8. ‘The Roving Gambler’ (Traditional) – John Cohen with The Down Hill Strugglers
9. ‘The Shoals of Herring’ (Ewan MacColl) – Oscar Isaac with Punch Brothers
10. ‘The Auld Triangle’ (Brendan Behan) – Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Marcus Mumford, Justin Timberlake, and Gabe Witcher
11. ‘The Storms Are on the Ocean’ (A.P. Carter) – Nancy Blake
12. ‘Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)’ (Traditional; Arranged by Oscar Isaac) – Oscar Isaac
13. ‘Farewell’ (Bob Dylan) – Bob Dylan
14. ‘Green, Green Rocky Road’ (Len Chandler & Robert Kaufman) – Dave Van Ronk