During their time together, the Beatles released over 200 studio-recorded songs. Out of all of those, Ringo Starr was officially credited with helping to write just five of them.

"I started writing songs and I would, like, tell John [Lennon] and Paul [McCartney] and George [Harrison], 'I've got this song I've written,'" Starr recalled in a 2025 interview for SiriusXM. "And they'd be rolling on the floor laughing because — I didn't know I was doing it — I would just rewrite someone else's song."

That's not to say the others didn't want to include Starr at all — in fact, Lennon and McCartney wrote several songs over the years meant specifically for Starr to sing, and the drummer had at least one lead vocal on most of their albums.

“When you think about it, how many people in rock and roll can sing?" McCartney said to Rolling Stone in 2015. "But Ringo can deliver a song.”

Starr had to start somewhere as far as songwriting went. The very first Beatles song he landed a composition credit on was "What Goes On," which appeared on 1965's Rubber Soul.
The Earlier Origins of 'What Goes On'

"What Goes On" actually dated back a few years in the Beatles' recording career.

Source: ultimateclassicrock.com/Allison Rapp

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John Lennon once called the Beatles' Ticket to Ride "one of the earliest heavy metal records made."

Try to imagine that song pumping through the house speakers before a Morbid Angel show, and you might conclude that Lennon's statement was a bit of a stretch. Still, the song's lumbering groove and droning riff were unusually heavy for 1965, especially within a pop landscape dominated by tracks like Wooly Bully and Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter.

Ticket to Ride was groundbreaking for another reason, though; It was the first Beatles record to feature Paul McCartney on lead guitar. He'd quietly slipped some gentle acoustic strumming into I'll Follow the Sun the previous year, but Ticket to Ride was different.

His electric leads enthusiastically leaped across the divides between the song's bridges and verses, then returned to playfully bob and weave throughout the outro, introducing listeners to a side of McCartney most fans barely realized existed.

"I guess I think of myself as a guitar player, really," he said in 1990. "If I couldn't have any other instrument, I would have to have an acoustic guitar.

"To the general public, McCartney is, of course, all about that bass. Publications from Rolling Stone to Bass Player have routinely ranked him as one of the greatest bassists ever, and four-string giants like Flea, Geddy Lee, John Paul Jones, Chris Squire and Sting have extolled his inventive, melodic approach to the instrument.

Source: yahoo.com/Damon Orion

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On this day (September 11) in 1962, the Beatles recorded the third version of “Love Me Do.” It was their debut single in the United Kingdom, where it peaked at No. 17. The song was also originally meant to be their debut single in the United States. However, the label balked and refused to release it until 1964, when it became their fourth consecutive chart-topper.

The Beatles recorded the first version of “Love Me Do” in June 1962 with Pete Best on drums. This recording didn’t see the light of day until it was included on Anthology 1 in 1995. Then, on September 4, they recorded it again, with Ringo Starr on drums. They released this version as their debut UK single in October 1962. Finally, on September 11, 1962, they cut the song a third time. This time, session musician Andy White played drums, and Starr played tambourine. The tambourine is an easy way to tell the two popular versions apart.

According to Songfacts, Parlophone Records issued “Love Me Do” as a single in the United Kingdom. Sales, especially in the Liverpool area, were good enough to take the song to No. 17. Capitol Records, Parlophone’s US partner, refused to release the single, fearing it would flop. Tollie finally released the song in the US in April 1964. By that time, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You,” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” had all reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Love Me Do” Is Older Than the Beatles.

When John Lennon and Paul McCartney were teenagers, they would skip school to write songs together. The duo wrote several songs before “Love Me Do,” but this was the first they liked enough to record.

While the song is officially a Lennon-McCartney co-write, there was some debate about the actual authorship of the song. “Paul wrote the main structure of this when he was 16, or even earlier,” Lennon said. “I think I had something to do with the middle.”

Source: americansongwriter.com/Clayton Edwards

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On 26 September 1969, The Beatles released their eleventh studio album Abbey Road. It was the last album the band recorded together and is widely regarded as a masterpiece.

Abbey Road was a triumphal swan song for The Beatles’ astonishing recording career. It also captured them still in their prime, capable of creating music that left most of their contemporaries standing.

Across its 47:03 running time, Abbey Road spans a dizzying array of styles, yet it is a stunningly cohesive work. It is also bold and innovative, as demonstrated by the song that opens the album, Come Together.

Come Together is a strikingly raw and direct song, written by John Lennon. It opens with one of the most iconic bass lines in rock and melds surreal stream-of-consciousness lyrics with a mean and gritty swamp-infused groove.

The initial idea for Come Together was reportedly sparked when American psychologist, writer and early advocate for psychedelic drugs, Dr Timothy Leary, asked John Lennon to write a song. This was to be used for Leary’s campaign to become Governor of California in 1969.

Source: musicradar.com/Neil Crossley

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One man's trash is another man's treasure, as the saying goes…or to put it in classic rock terms, a "throwaway" song for the Beatles was a breakthrough hit for the Rolling Stones.

"I Wanna Be Your Man" was originally released by the Stones as a single in 1963 and became the band's first Top 20 hit in the U.K., peaking at #12. But it was actually written for Ringo Starr to sing by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were walking down London's Charing Cross Road when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards passed them in a taxi.

"So they shouted from the taxi and we yelled, 'Hey, hey, give us a lift, give us a lift,' and we bummed a lift off them," McCartney recalled in Many Years From Now by Barry Miles.

"So there were the four of us sitting in a taxi and I think Mick said, 'Hey, we're recording. Got any songs?' And we said, 'Aaaah, yes, sure, we got one. How about Ringo's song? You could do it as a single,'" he added.

"We often used to say to people, the words don't really matter, people don't listen to words, it's the sound they listen to," McCartney continued.

"So 'I Wanna Be Your Man' was to try and give Ringo something like 'Boys'; an uptempo song he could sing from the drums. So again, it had to be very simple."

In Lennon's opinion, the song was a "throwaway."  "The only two versions of the song were Ringo and the Rolling Stones," Lennon explained in All We Are Saying by David Sheff.

Source: yahoo.com/Jacqueline Burt Cote

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The Beatles changed the face of popular music, releasing 13 studio albums and around 213 songs throughout their decade-long career. The prolific hitmakers also inspired entire subgenres of music, especially with their iconic 1966 record, Revolver. And on this day, 60 years ago, Revolver skyrocketed to No. 1 on the US Billboard 200 chart.
‘Revolver’ by the Beatles Hit No. 1 on Sept. 10, 1966

Released as the Beatles’ seventh studio album on Aug. 5, 1966, Revolver marked a musical shift for the four-piece rock outfit. They built on the artistry established on the preceding album, Rubber Soul, producing an innovative, genre-bending affair with influences from rock, pop, R&B, psychedelia, and Hindustani classical music, as heard in “Love You To.”

The Fab Four released a double A-sided single in promotion of the album: “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yellow Submarine.” The latter fared better than the former, chart-wise, peaking at No. 2 on the US Billboard Hot 100, while “Eleanor Rigby” climbed to the No. 11 spot on the same chart.

Revolver entered the Billboard 200 on Sept. 3, 1966, one week before taking the top spot. It reigned at No. 1 for six weeks. It hit No. 1 on six other weekly global charts, including the UK Record Retailer LPs Chart. It also received critical acclaim, especially in the UK. At the time of its release, Record Mirror lauded the album for its “musical ingenuity,” while KRLA Beat praised it as “a musical creation of exceptional excellence.

Source: mensjournal.com/Melody McCune

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