Paul McCartney has released his first ever duet with former Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr. Check out the nostalgic ‘Home To Us’ below.
The track is the second to be shared from Macca’s new album ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’, which arrives on May 29 (pre-order here), following on from the powerful lead single ‘Days We Left Behind’.
After that lead single dropped, reports started to emerge that Ringo Starr would appear on the record as a guest drummer, and at a special fan album playback event at Abbey Road on Tuesday (May 5), McCartney confirmed that rumours were true.
He played the full album exclusively for the 50 lucky fans in attendance, and confirmed that the song with Starr was called ‘Home To Us’ and set for release on Friday (today, May 8).
It is the first music the two Beatles icons have made together as a duet, and also features Sharleen Spiteri and The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde on guest vocals. McCartney plays the majority of instruments on the song – much like in his 1970 solo debut album, ‘McCartney’ – and it is produced by Andrew Watt.
Already, the album has been confirmed as McCartney’s “most introspective album to date” and revolves around previously unshared memories of his formative years in Liverpool. This is captured poignantly in the new single, as it sees Macca and Starr retrace their respective childhoods in the UK city.
“The place we used to live in, you could say it wasn’t much/ But it was home to us/ And you could be forgiven if you thought that it was rough/ But it was home to us,” they sing in the upbeat, nostalgic opening verse.
“We didn’t worry where the road was going to take us to/ There wasn’t time to make a fuss ’cause that was all we knew/ The world around us wasn’t safe, the place was falling down/ But it was my hometown,” McCartney sings in the swinging, uplifting chorus, backed by ethereal harmonies from Hynde and Spiteri.
Sharing what inspired the song, McCartney said: “Ringo went round to the studio and drummed a bit. I said to Andrew, we should make a track and send it to him. So this song is done totally with Ringo in mind…”
“In writing the song I’m talking about where we came from. In common with a lot of people, you come from nothing and you build yourself up. Ringo was from the Dingle, and that was well hard. He said he used to get mugged coming home, because he worked. Even though it was crazy, it was home to us,” he added
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“I made the song around that idea and sent it to Ringo. He sent me back a version where he just added some lines to the chorus, so I thought, maybe he doesn’t like it. I rang him and he said he thought I only wanted him to sing one or two lines, and I said I’d love to hear him sing the whole thing. So we took my first line, Ringo’s second line, and then we had a duet.
“We’d never done that before. Then we wanted some backing vocals and I had the idea it would be nice to hear girls. Chrissie Hynde said she’d do it, and Sharleen Spiteri, they’re mates. So they did it.”
The last time the two surviving Beatles members worked together was on the 2023 standalone track ‘Now And Then’ – which was made around a vocal track from John Lennon unearthed in 1994, and labelled as the “final” song from the Fab Four.
‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ is the first album from McCartney since 2020’s ‘McCartney III’.
As well as exploring his childhood in Liverpool, the record is also set to find McCartney “in a candid, vulnerable and deeply reflective mood, writing with rare openness about […] the resilience of his parents, and early adventures shared with George Harrison and John Lennon long before the world had ever heard of Beatlemania”.
For Starr, the collab comes shortly after he released his 22nd solo album, ‘Long Long Road’ on April 24 via UMe.
It sees him joined by St. Vincent, Sheryl Crow and Billy Strings and has been produced by T-Bone Burnett. He recently spoke to NME about the record and the guest features.
“Everyone on there brings something different because they’re all great players and singers. They’re great musicians who have been at it a while, and they all came through T Bone. In my eyes, he’s never made a mistake on my records,” he said.
