''Liverpool 8'' is the 15th studio album by Ringo Starr, released worldwide on 14 January 2008. Received with mixed reviews, it marked Starr's return to

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

for the first time since leaving the label in 1975, following the end of

the Beatles The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developmen ...

' recording contract with the company.

Background

''Liverpool 8'' was originally planned for release in June 2007, and began as another production by the collaborative team of Mark Hudson and Starr (the two had previously co-produced ''

Vertical Man ''Vertical Man'' is the 11th studio album by Ringo Starr, issued in 1998. The album served as Starr's attempt at a commercial comeback following the success of ''The Beatles Anthology'' project. Starr enlisted the help of many of his musician fr ...

'', ''

I Wanna Be Santa Claus ''I Wanna Be Santa Claus'' is the 12th studio album by Ringo Starr. A Christmas album, it was issued in 1999. Background and recording Ringo Starr and musical partner Mark Hudson composed "Dear Santa" and "Christmas Eve" in July 1998 at Starr' ...

'', ''

VH1 Storytellers ''Storytellers'' is a television music series produced by the VH1 network. In each episode, artists perform in front of a (mostly small and intimate) live audience, and tell stories about their music, writing experiences and memories, somewhat ...

'', '' Ringo Rama'', and '' Choose Love''). However, the release date was pushed back to the beginning of 2008 when Hudson was replaced by Dave Stewart after a falling out with Starr. The album's production credits read, "Produced by Ringo Starr and Mark Hudson; Re-Produced by Ringo Starr and David Stewart." All of the songs but one were written with the Roundheads, although Stewart also has several co-writing credits. Starr's attorney Bruce Grakal told journalist Peter Palmiere that the partnership between Hudson and Starr was over and they would never work together again. This happened after Hudson dropped out of Starr's 2006 tour as musical director to do the television special '' The One: Making a Music Star''. According to Palmiere, Hudson claimed that the split was over Starr's insistence on using synthesized sounds, for which Stewart is known, whereas Hudson wanted real guitars, pianos, strings etc. However, concerning the parting of ways with Hudson, Starr commented, "The separation between Mark Hudson and myself was a question of trust and friendship and had nothing to do with synthesizers."

Release

''Liverpool 8'' was released worldwide by Capitol Records. The title refers to the postal district of the

Toxteth Toxteth is an inner-city area of Liverpool in the historic county of Lancashire and the ceremonial county of Merseyside. Toxteth is located to the south of Liverpool city centre, bordered by Aigburth, Canning, Dingle, and Edge Hill. The area ...

area of Liverpool in which Starr was born. The album was released on CD,

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

, and

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

Wristband. It was available as a free audio stream at ''www.vh1classic.com'' before its release date. The title track was released on CD and digital download as the first single from the album on 7 January 2008. ''Liverpool 8'' entered the

UK Album Chart The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts ...

at number 91, and reached a peak of number 94 in the US. The album sold 7,000 copies within the first week of release and as of January 2010, 31,000 copies have been sold. A few weeks later after the album release, readers of the '' New York Daily News'' were offered a non-album track called "It's Love", which was recorded during the sessions for ''Liverpool 8''.

Reception

''Liverpool 8'' has a 59 percent "mixed or average" rating from

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. '' Billboard'' gave the album a positive review, calling it "full of nostalgia for the good ol' days".Liverpool 8
/ref> Stephen Thomas Erlewine of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

writes that "it's nothing too flashy and it has not one tune that calls attention to itself". In a particularly unfavourable review for ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'',

Pete Paphides Peter Paphides (born 1969 as Panayiotakis Paphides or Panayiotis Paphides) is a British journalist and broadcaster. Early life Paphides was born in Birmingham to a Greek Cypriot father, Chris, and a Greek mother, Victoria. He has an elder broth ...

wrote that "it’s hard not to boggle at

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

's susceptibility to flattery", and "Just because

he album He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

was fun to make, it doesn’t follow that you might enjoy listening to it."

Track listing

All tracks written by Ringo Starr, Mark Hudson,

Gary Burr Gary Burr, born in Meriden, Connecticut, is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, primarily in the country music genre. Many of the songs he has written have become Top-10 hits, the first of which was " Love's Been A Little B ...

and Steve Dudas except where noted.

USB file listing

The Ringo Starr Liverpool 8 Exclusive Reusable USB Wristband claims to contain on its packaging: * Entire album in MP3 format * Personal message from Ringo Starr * Behind the scenes interview video from Ringo Starr * Track-by-track video commentary by Ringo Starr * 2 brand new ringtones * Photos and Bio ''The Bio could not be located among the USB files.''
These are the actual files found on the USB drive.

Root Directory

The root directory contains two system files, one system directory (empty), and four directories with the actual assets. Note, the original directory dates were lost when the USB was inserted into a Windows 10 PC.

Liverpool 8 - 192kbps Directory

This directory contains the twelve songs on the album in MP3 format. Technical details of the files are: * Encoded by iTunes v7.1.1.5 * Codec: MPEG Audio layer 1/2 (mpga) * Type: Audio * Channels: Stereo * Sample rate: 44100 Hz * Bits per sample: 32 * Bitrate: 192 kbit/s

Liverpool 8 Artwork Directory

The artwork is found on a single PDF file with two pages showing the album's cover art on the first page and a track listing next to Ringo's picture on the second page.

Liverpool 8 Video Directory

The single video file contains three of the items promised on the packaging: * Personal message from Ringo Starr * Behind the scenes interview video from Ringo Starr * Track-by-track video commentary by Ringo Starr The technical details of the video file are: * Audio ** Codec: MPEG AAC Audio (mp4a) ** Channels: Stereo ** Sample rate: 32000 Hz ** Bits per sample: 32 * Video ** Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1) ** Video resolution: 480x270 ** Frame rate: 29.966428 (NTSC)

Ringtune Clips - 192kbps Directory

The two ringtones are encoded identical to the twelve songs. They are 38 and 27 second edits of two of the album's songs.

Personnel

Personnel per booklet. ;Musicians * Ringo Starr – drums,

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are ...

, claps, organ * Sean Hurley – bass *

David A. Stewart David Allan Stewart (born 9 September 1952) is an English musician, songwriter and record producer, best known for Eurythmics, his successful professional partnership with Annie Lennox. Sometimes credited as David A. Stewart, he won Best British ...

–

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

, acoustic guitar, orchestra arrangement, backwards fabulousness, slide Guitar *

– backing vocals, claps, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, whistle, keyboards, mandolin * Steve Dudas – backing vocals, claps, electric guitar, classical guitar * Brent Carpenter – backing vocals, claps * Mark Hudson – backing vocals, claps, bass, electric guitar,

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

, keyboards, acoustic guitar,

bongos Bongos ( es, bongó) are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. They are struck with both hands, most commonly in an eight-stroke pattern called ''martillo'' (hammer). The ...

, harmonica, mellotron * Bruce Sugar – backing vocals, claps * Keith Allison – backing vocals, claps * Suzie Katayama – orchestra arrangement, conductor * Zac Rae – keyboards * Dave Way – bass * Jesse Davey – electric guitar ;Production * Ringo Starr, Mark Hudson –

producers Producer or producers may refer to: Occupations *Producer (agriculture), a farm operator *A stakeholder of economic production *Film producer, supervises the making of films **Executive producer, contributes to a film's budget and usually does not ...

, except on "Liverpool 8" * Ringo Starr, David A. Stewart – producers on "Liverpool 8" * Mark Hudson – additional production * Ringo Starr, David A. Stewart – re-producers * Bruce Sugar –

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

* Steve Dudas, Gary Burr, Ned Douglas – additional engineers * Bill Malina – mixing *

Ted Jensen Ted Jensen (born September 19, 1954) is an American mastering engineer, known for having mastered many recordings, including the Eagles' ''Hotel California'', Green Day's '' American Idiot'' and Norah Jones' ''Come Away with Me''. Biography T ...

– mastering * Tom Recchion – art direction * Paul Moore – design * Brian Griffin – photography

Charts

References

External links

*
The Official Ringo Starr Site
{{Authority control 2008 albums Ringo Starr albums Albums produced by David A. Stewart Albums produced by Ringo Starr Albums produced by Mark Hudson (musician) Capitol Records albums