As a departure from the experimental quality that had characterised solo LPs by George Harrison and John Lennon since 1968, it was the first studio album by an individual Beatle to embrace a popular music form.

[5] Starr committed to the project in order to keep active following John Lennon's unpublicised decision in September 1969 to leave the Beatles, signalling that the group were effectively no more.

[10][nb 1] Starr compiled a list of the songs he wished to record, and Martin and Beatles aide Neil Aspinall contacted the musical arrangers.

[3] The material Starr selected included works from the big band era[13] and songs well known through recordings by Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Fats Waller and Matt Munro.

[38] The backing track for "Blue, Turning Grey Over You", from an arrangement by jazz bandleader Oliver Nelson,[39] was taped on 28 November and completed on 4 December, although Starr did not record his vocal until early in 1970.

[44][nb 4] On 3 January 1970, he joined Harrison and McCartney to record "I Me Mine" and add overdubs to "Let It Be", for their inclusion on the album accompanying the documentary film from the Get Back sessions, now titled Let It Be.

[46][47] The backing track for "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing" had been taped at A&M Studios in Los Angeles on 26 December, when Jones conducted a 27-piece orchestra playing his arrangement.

[27][48] The Perry-arranged "Sentimental Journey" was also recorded in the US late the previous year;[49] the backing featured an unusual mix of instruments, including a "talking guitar" solo.

[52][nb 5] Authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter write that after the intermittent recording since October the previous year, work on Starr's debut album began "in earnest" in early February 1970.

[48] Following the 18 February overdubbing session, Starr taped an early version of his rock song "It Don't Come Easy" (then titled "You Gotta Pay Your Dues"), with Harrison directing the musicians.

[54] At De Lane Lea Studios the following day, Johnny Dankworth conducted a 20-piece orchestra on his arrangement of "You Always Hurt the One You Love";[56] Starr then added his vocal to the track.

[72] Beatles historian Bruce Spizer comments on the aptness of the eventual title, since Starr was "literally taking his fans on a sentimental journey" through his choice of songs.

[74] The Empress was his local pub as a young man;[75] according to author Alan Clayson, in past decades, all of the album's standards would have been sung by happy patrons in the bar there.

[77][78] Starr sang the song live over a mix of the studio recording in which his main vocal had been removed,[78] and the Talk of the Town Orchestra, conducted by Martin, played along behind him.

[68] In author John Winn's description, in its grand production, the "Sentimental Journey" clip rivals the sequence for "Your Mother Should Know" that closed the Beatles' 1967 TV film Magical Mystery Tour.

[86] The release of Sentimental Journey was the source of friction between Starr and McCartney, who was estranged from his bandmates due to their appointment of Allen Klein to manage the band's Apple Corps organisation.

[93][nb 12] According to NME critic Bob Woffinden, the album was seen as a "grievous faux pas" amid the publicity surrounding McCartney's announcement on 9 April, since it appeared as though Starr had similarly tried to launch a solo career on the news that the Beatles had broken up.

"[1] Following the album's release, he considered offers for a Las Vegas concert season, performing for hotel diners in the style of Elvis Presley's engagements at the International, but decided against it.

"[114] In a review that Alan Clayson highlights as especially kind,[115] Andy Gray of the NME said that Starr's singing might surprise listeners, as it was not instantly recognisable as him, and was "mostly ... on the beat and on the melody line".

[116] John Gabree of High Fidelity considered that the impressive cast of musical arrangers was merely "compensating for the fact that Ringo can't sing" and dismissed most of the material as "some of the tiredest junk ever written".

[118] In Stereo Review, Don Heckman wrote that Sentimental Journey suggested that Starr had long hidden "the heart of a determined romantic" behind his Charlie Chaplin-like acceptance of his standing as the Beatles' "comic relief".

Heckman criticised the selection of standards as "unbelievably hoary" but said the contrast in arrangements was stranger still, from O'Farrill's "pseudo-Basie" contribution to Bernstein's "Hollywood Bowl rock".

[119] Writing in the late 1970s, NME critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler called the record "a gawky, badly sung, overly sentimental selection of moribund mambos" and "the most embarrassing (to date) of all Beatles solo excursions".

[126][nb 15] NPR music critic Tim Riley reacted more favourably: "Backed by full jazz band and occasional strings, Ringo poses as a Liverpudlian Jack Jones, with surprisingly good results."

Riley added that the album had "a deceptively easy feel, and the strongest moments ... ('Dream' and 'Blue, Turning Grey Over You' ...) confirm his fundamental appeal as a personality.

"[128] Sentimental Journey predated standards collections by other rock artists, including Harry Nilsson's A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, Linda Ronstadt's What's New and Rod Stewart's It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook.

In addition to citing Ronstadt's 1980s albums with arranger Nelson Riddle and Stewart's series of Great American Songbook releases, Spizer views it as a precursor for "aging rockers" such as Bryan Ferry with As Time Goes By and Boz Scaggs with But Beautiful to "belatedly [jump] on the big band wagon" over subsequent decades.

[3][nb 16] In 2017, following Bob Dylan's recent albums exploring the Great American Songbook, Pitchfork included Sentimental Journey in its list of eight recommended standards collections that "surprise" and "involve artists finding themselves within songs meant for all".