Arguably the least famous member of the Beatles, Ringo Starr still embarked into an extensive solo career that keeps going to this day. On January 10, 2025 his 21st studio album Look Up will be released.

Phil Collins aside, drummers rarely do wonders on their own. By the end of 1975 though, Starr had recorded 7 US top 10 hits, as many as John Lennon (4) and George Harrison (3) combined. We review the success of his career up to date.

Looking at the big picture: Ringo Starr

A childhood full of struggles... and music (1940-1960)

Sir Richard Starkey, stage name Ringo Starr, was born July 7, 1940 in Liverpool, England. He was off to a difficult start. A lone child to his parents, he saw his father leave the family when he was only three. He almost passed away aged 6 until he recovered from his coma, and by the time he was 15, he had spend a year in a children hospital and two more in a sanatorium due to various health issues.

There, he discovered drums, quickly becoming obsessed with them. His academic struggles led to his early withdrawal when he left the hospital. The teenager didn't had that much success with employment attempts either.

While he was completing a machinist apprenticeship he obtained thanks to his new stepfather, he met with people as interested in music as him. From 1956 to 1960, he honed his skills and joined several bands, first skiffle music groups, then rock and roll bands.

The making of the Beatles (1960-1962)

By the end of this era, he was enrolled with the Hurricanes, one of the most reputed bands in the Liverpool area. The band got popular enough to perform several months' residencies and tour in France and Germany.

They went to that latter country, in Hamburg, on October 1960. The Hurricanes were the leading performers, over another growing Liverpool band named The Beatles. This was the first time Ringo Starr met, and played, with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison. Tony Sheridan was also there. These meetings and shows led to countless bootlegs in later years.

Both Sheridan and the Beatles were keen on welcoming Starr, but he decided to continue with the Hurricanes until 1962. By August, the Beatles' then drummer Pete Best was fired as the rest of the band was dissatisfied with his drumming during their first recording sessions. Starr accepted the invitation to replace him. The Beatles' four-piece band as we know it was set.

Due to his popularity among their early fans, the departure of Best, and consequently the arrival of Starr, was poorly received. The band producer George Martin also introduced him cautiously in their very first sessions. Quickly though, Starr proved himself as the perfect fit for the band, and by the end of the year they were making some serious noise in the UK.

The Beatlemania and its cons (1963-1970)

When the Beatles exploded in the UK during 1963, and in February 1964 in the US, Starr was a kind of fan favorite. That was due to his playful nature, quirky personality, and humorous interviews. For example, the diva Cher started her career with the song Ringo, I Love You, perfectly illustrating the popularity enjoyed by the drummer. He also seemed the most comfortable in front of a camera, as shown on their movies A Hard Day's Night and Help!.

Critics weren't as positive. Back then, musicians were often rated by their solos, which used to be technique demonstrations. That was never the thing of Starr, nor the Beatles. They weren't about virtuosity, they were about greatness, about pure, simple, raw enjoyment. And to set up a solid drums backbone to an implacable melody, Starr was second to none. He was fundamental part of their perfect chemistry.

The band always wanted to give a voice to every member. Starr, as the others, took the mic on some songs, albeit his contributions were usually limited to one song per album. His most famous rendition may be Yellow Submarine, along with With A Little Help From My Friends. He also wrote some tracks, including Abbey Road's Octopus's Garden.

When McCartney and Lennon wanted to push the creativity further from mid-60s, the drums presence on their songs was sharply reduced. Starr felt isolated from his bandmates, barely contributing to some recording sessions. He married in 1965 to Maureen Cox, and had three children in 1965, 1967, 1970, surely giving him some perspective as well about his role as part of the group. Easy going by nature, tensions between the remaining members added to his frustration.

In late 1969, John Lennon announced to the remaining Beatles that he was leaving, Paul McCartney followed him, which effectively ended the active years of the band.

An unexpected solo success (1970-1975)

When the news of the Beatles breakup made headlines, all eyes were set on Lennon and McCartney, wondering who was going to do best as a solo artist. Odds were obviously against Starr.

In the long run, he was not able to compete with them. For the first half of the 70s though, his string of hits was impressive. After the album of classics covers Sentimental Journey and the country effort Beaucoups of Blues, both mostly unsuccessful, his chances of making it big were close to zero. His former bandmates were still enjoying his contributions on their own solo project, like George Harrison on All Things Must Pass.

In 1971, Starr's non-album single It Don't Come Easy, co-written with Harrison, went to #4 in both the US and the UK. A year later, Back Off Boogaloo, another song written from them gave Starr a new top 10 hit in the US.

In 1973, the drummer released his first proper pop album, Ringo. The project was a surprise hit, going as high as #2 in the US and #7 in the UK. Its singles did even better as both Photograph and You're Sixteen went to #1 in the US. Oh My My peaked at 5, giving the album a trio of top 5 hits, something very rare at the time. A cover of Only You (1974, #6) and No No Song (1975, #3) completed a US top 10 hits string of 7 songs spread over 4 years.

Downward spiral ...and his All-Starr band (1976-now)

Off to a fantastic start, the solo career of Starr started to fade away in the second half of the 70s. After No No Song, he never touched the top 10 single chart again. A Dose of Rock 'n' Roll was his best performer at #26. His last Hot 100 entry came in 1981 with Wrack My Brain peaking at #38.

Struggling with alcohol addictions along with his second wife Barbara Bach (married in 1980), his career was in a nowhere land until a detox in late 1988. After that, Starr rebuild his career through touring. He introduced the concept of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, teaming with several musicians that got very successful careers themselves, singing songs from their respective catalogs. Every new tour had a new set of artists surrounding the former Beatles.

Enjoying his new sober life, after the success of the initial tour in 1989 he repeated this formula several times until his last tour in 2022. In the meantime, he resumed at recording, publishing 11 studio albums from 1992's Time Takes Time to 2019's What's My Name.

A new studio album, titled Look Up, has been announced for January 10, 2025. Now 84, the once fragile child continues to pursue his love for music.

Ringo Starr album sales

Updated studio album sales & comments

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While they weren't popular music albums in first place, both Sentimental Journey and Beaucoups of Blues topped half a million in sales up to date.

The big hit is obviously Ringo, with sales past 3 million copies. This is an impressive number by 1973 standards. With a good traction as well was Goodnight Vienna, at 1.5 million. Of course, numbers went down from there. Ringo's Rotogravure couldn't hit a million although it wasn't too far away. Then sales figures drop below 300,000 units starting with Ringo the 4th.

Stop and Smell the Roses was an uptick, climbing to 450,000 sales. While figures remained mostly in 6 digits until 2003's Ringo Rama, recent efforts have been moving about 50,000 units apiece.

Overall, these studio albums add for almost 9 million albums sold.

Want to compare the act's albums with others?

Ringo Starr songs sales

Below, we list down results from the artist through physical sales, digital sales and streaming.

Please be aware that when the artist is regarded as the lead act, they are rewarded with 100% of these units. However, featured acts share a 50% piece of the total.

Physical singles

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Ringo Starr has 3 songs often credited as million sellers, It Don't Come Easy, Photograph and You're Sixteen. In fact, these are his RIAA Gold awards. They refer to US sales only though. They were all fairly big globally, each cracking 2 million worldwide.

And as we speak about global sales, Back Off Boogaloo and Only You are also million sellers, with Oh My My almost there as well. His last US Top 10 hit No No Song sold 800,000 physical copies. Starr career total stands on 14 million physical singles. Not bad for the drummer!

Digital songs

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Both It Don't Come Easy and Photograph are almost equally strong, around half a million digital sales each. No No Song has been holding in popularity better than most of the remaining 70s hits, coming in as the 3rd largest digital seller. You're Sixteen is close behind. With numbers going below 100,000 units, the other songs are mostly forgotten nowadays.

Streaming

Audio Streams
– South Korea: Genie streams * 2.20 (consistent with Gaon streaming numbers)
– Japan: AWA streams * 100 / 4 (AWA has 4% of the Japanese streaming market)
– Arabic world: Anghami streams
– Sub-Saharan Africa: Boomplay + Audiomack streams
– Elsewhere: Spotify streams * Spotify market shares based on artists' market distribution

Video Streams
– China* : QQ video streams * 50 if the song is available for audio stream, QQ video streams * 5 elseway (scale built based on known figures for several major artists)
– Elsewhere : Youtube views increased by 10% to account for various local platforms

*since Chinese streaming platforms are mostly video streaming platforms, their streams are weighted on par with YouTube streams.

Audio Stream value – 1,500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream value – 6,750 views equal 1 album unit

Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = ( Spotify * ArtistRatio + Genie * 2.20 + AWA * 100 / 4 + Anghami + Boomplay + Audiomack ) / 1500 + ( QQ views* 50(or 5) + YouTube * 1.1 ) / 6750

Top hits

On streaming platforms, Photograph has a slight lead over It Don't Come Easy. This situation is true on both Spotify and YouTube, with near 50 million streams and over 20 million views for the leader. While these numbers are not record breaking, they are certainly relevant enough to show that there are fans still listenning to Starr as of now.

You're Sixteen comes next, with about half the numbers of the top 2. From No No Song, it gets more complicated as numbers drop below 10,000 units.

Full catalog breakdown

If you are familiar with the artist's catalog and want to check details of each and every song, you can access to all of them right here.

Keep yourself up to date

Our website provides you a fantastic tool which fetches updated Spotify streams as you request them, use it to watch these results grow day after day!

Ringo Starr compilations sales

Assigning compilation sales to original studio albums

How do you understand this table? For example, if we check the Blast From Your Past line, these figures mean it sold 1,250,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included in this package add for 152,492 equivalent album sales from streams across all formats.

The second part (on the right of the table) shows how many equivalent streams are coming from each original album, plus the share it represents in the overall package.

Therefore, the streaming figures convey that songs from Ringo equate to 86% of Blast From Your Past' tracklist attractiveness. Meaning, it generated 1,076,000 of its 1,250,000 album sales and so on for the other records.

Raw compilations sales

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On top of his studio albums and physical singles, Ringo Starr also sold his share of compilation records and live releases. The most relevant of them is the aforementioned Blast From Your Past, a 1975 best of album which perfectly sums up the success of his first half decade as a solo artist. It sold 1.25 million copies.

Nowadays, the 250,000 plus seller Photograph: The Very Best Of Ringo from 2007 is the primary choice among his compilations. On top of that, his live output branded after the Ringo Starr & the All-Starr Band concept has topped half a million sales in total.

Re-assigned compilation sales – Results & comments

Home for 3 of his biggest hits, Ringo is logically the album which generated the most sales of compilations and live albums. Please note that these numbers do not equate to 100% of his long format sales, as some of these have been achieved thanks to Beatles songs. In this case, sales are directly assigned to the band totals.

Bonus: Total album (all types) sales per country

Please note country-specific numbers may miss sales of a few minor releases, although totals are complete.

Ringo Starr: career results (CSPC)

Albums results (CSPC)

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Of course, many of these numbers are unimpressive. As we are used to study all-time top sellers, we rarely see albums with less than 100,000 sales once everything is considered. Ringo Starr has plenty of these.

He also has a 7.5 million seller though. Ringo does perform incredibly well. Even its streaming count tops 100,000 units, which is pretty decent. To put things into perspective, among 1973 releases Ringo sold more than classic albums like David Bowie's Aladdin Sane and Neil Diamond's Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Goodnight Vienna is a good seller too, with no less than 3 million sales. Ringo's Rotogravure closes the list of million sellers. Over half a million are Sentimental Journey, Beaucoups of Blues, and Stop and Smell the Roses.

All things considered, Starr reaches nearly 16 million equivalent album sales, quite something for a drummer who's not a proper songwriter.

Singles results (CSPC)

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Want to compare the act's songs with other top hits?

Discography results (ASR)

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Records & achievements

• At 7,555,000 EAS, Ringo belongs to the 20 most successful albums from 1973.
• From 1971 to 1975, Starr scored a streak of 7 consecutive top 10 singles in the US.

Dynamic Spotify key performance indicators

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As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Discogs.

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