Release and Reception
Ringo the 4th was a dismal failure upon its release, both commercially and critically. Never touching the UK charts, the album limped to a paltry #162 in the US, before expiring. Shortly thereafter, Atlantic Records dropped Starr from their roster. In the UK, Polydor fulfilled its three-album contractual requirement by following up with a children's album, Scouse the Mouse which featured Starr, in the lead role, performing the lion's share of the material.
Journalist Peter Palmiere states in his front cover story on Starr for DISCoveries magazine in January 2003 that "The music critics and the record buying public took the album as a joke for Ringo's voice was not suitable for the disco flavored music on Ringo the 4th". Palmiere went on to claim that Ringo the 4th destroyed Starr's career and that he never commercially recovered from it.
Neither of the two singles pulled from Ringo the 4th, "Drowning in the Sea of Love" and "Wings" charted in the US. However, the non-album track "Just a Dream" which featured on the flip-side of both singles has gone on to become one of Starr's most sought after rarities. And the US stock copy of "Drowning in the Sea of Love" is also ultra rare with copies tending to fetch a hefty sum amongst collectors. In foreign countries, other songs were released as singles: "Sneaking Sally Through the Alley" b/w "Tango All Night" (Australia) and "Tango All Night" b/w "It's No Secret" (Argentina).
Read more about this topic: Ringo The 4th
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release and/or reception:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)