When Ringo Starr Got His First Writing Credit on a Beatles Song
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
