Songfacts®:

• "Thankful" is Ringo Starr's pedal steel-drenched love letter to his wife Barbara Bach wrapped in a distinctly Californian glow.
  
  "I always like to focus on the positive," said Ringo. And indeed, the track is a shimmering postcard of gratitude for turning his life around in the late 1980s after a long and frequently blurry affair with alcohol. "Turned away from all the things that mattered," he sings, before declaring that his love for his wife made him a better man.
  
  "I'm thankful for Barbara being in my life," he told The London Times. "I was at the top of the mountain... and then I looked up, and life came back."
• Ringo handles most of the vocals while Alison Krauss, one of country and bluegrass music's most respected voices, floats in occasionally to harmonize.
• Ringo Starr recorded "Thankful" for his country album Look Up. The record was born out of a collaboration between Starr and T. Bone Burnett, who wrote or co-wrote the bulk of the songs on the album. They first met in 2022 at an event and Starr asked Burnett to write some songs for an EP. The results are a group of country tracks that make up the backbone of Look Up.
• "Thankful" is the only song on Look Up that Ringo had a hand in writing; he wrote it alongside his longtime producer and engineer Bruce Sugar. Burnett noted to Mojo magazine "Thankful" is "the most personal song" Starr has ever done.
• Ringo has always had a soft spot for country, from Beatles-era nods like "Act Naturally" to his thoroughly twangy 1970 solo album, Beaucoups of Blues. "Thankful" continues that tradition but gives it a sun-soaked, West Coast update - a sound Ringo dubs "LA country."