Paul McCartney is readying a new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. Made with producer Andrew Watt, the LP is set for release on May 29, via MPL/Capitol. A single, “Days We Left Behind,” leads the LP; listen to that below.
In a press release, McCartney frames the album as an autobiographical record that reckons with his childhood in post-war Liverpool. Of the single, he says, “This is very much a memory song for me. The album title, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, comes from a lyric in this track. I was thinking just that, about the days I left behind and I do often wonder if I’m just writing about the past but then I think how can you write about anything else? It’s just a lot of memories of Liverpool. It involves a bit in the middle about John and Forthlin Road which is the street I used to live in. Dungeon Lane is near there. I used to live in a place called Speke which is quite working class. We didn’t have much at all but it didn’t matter because all the people were great and you didn’t notice you didn’t have much.”
Macca’s last album, McCartney III, arrived in 2020, followed a year later by a remix album, McCartney III Imagined, featuring the likes of Beck, Phoebe Bridgers, and Dev Hynes. As ever with the storied Beatle, archival releases have since come thick and fast, including a singles box set, an anniversary reissue of Wings’ Band on the Run, and a release of the shelved 1974 sessions known as One Hand Clapping. More recently, a book and documentary on Wings have helped cement the post-Beatles band’s place in history alongside its predecessor, as McCartney continues to ply his trade on exhaustive tours around the world.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane:
01 As You Lie There
02 Lost Horizon
03 Days We Left Behind
04 Ripples in a Pond
05 Mountain Top
06 Down South
07 We Two
08 Come Inside
09 Never Know
10 Home to Us
11 Life Can Be Hard
12 First Star of the Night
13 Salesman Saint
14 Momma Gets By
