Paul McCartney Previews ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’ at Abbey Road Listening Event

McCartney spent 90 minutes walking competition winners through his most personal solo record yet, due May 29.

Paul McCartney hosted a private listening event at Abbey Road Studios on May 5, playing his forthcoming solo album ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane' in full for approximately 50 competition-winning fans. Seated in Studio Two, the same room where The Beatles recorded the bulk of their catalog, McCartney spent 90 minutes walking the crowd through the record, sharing memories of John Lennon, George Harrison, and his working-class Liverpool upbringing. The album is scheduled for release on 29 May 2026.

Studio Two, Living Room Setup

The setting was deliberately intimate. Studio Two was dressed with an armchair, a guitar, a bookcase of McCartney memorabilia, framed photos, records, and a street sign bearing the new album title. Fans had their phones locked away before being led in, and McCartney descended from the control room to take a seat in the living-room-style arrangement.

“Hello, welcome to Abbey Road,” he told the crowd. “I'm going to play the new album for you and try and think of stuff to say about it.” What followed, by multiple accounts, was considerably more than that.

A Record Rooted in Liverpool Memory

McCartney described the album as containing quite a few songs that “go back in time,” and reflected on why the past keeps pulling at his writing. “It occurred to me that that's where your big bank of information is,” he said. “If you're Charles Dickens, you're gonna write about how your dad was in prison or something. [The past] is a very rich field of information.”

The album takes its title from the lead single ‘Days We Left Behind', a wistful acoustic track referencing Dungeon Lane near the River Mersey, where McCartney roamed as a boy. The song also contains what McCartney described as a “secret code” and a promise made to Lennon at his childhood home on Forthlin Road: “I stand by what I said, the promise that I made will never be broken.” McCartney told the crowd the song still makes him emotional when he thinks about Lennon.

“This was a lot of memories of Liverpool for me,” he said of the track, “but also any days we've left behind. Everyone's got them, school, old mates.”

The album opener, ‘As You Lie There', grew out of a guitar sketch McCartney made during his first session with producer Andrew Watt five years ago. Playing idly, McCartney stumbled onto a chord sequence he didn't recognize; Watt suggested they record it. McCartney later built the track out himself, playing most of the instruments, and the song reaches back to a childhood crush on a neighbor named Jasmine. “I didn't know how to approach her, I never spoke to her,” he recalled. “The joke was, she did show up later that year and knocked on the door. I was indisposed, I was on the toilet, so I missed Jasmine.”

Harrison Stories and the ‘Home to Us' Collaboration with Ringo

The acoustic-led track ‘Down South' carries memories of hitchhiking with George Harrison when the two first became friends. McCartney described himself as the instigator of those trips, mimicking his younger self urging Lennon and Harrison to join him. He shared a specific story about hitching a ride on a milk float with Harrison, who had to sit on the battery and got a burn from his jeans zip connecting to it.

“Memories are a weird thing,” McCartney acknowledged. “I was talking to Olivia [Harrison] and she said, ‘Oh yeah, George told me about that and how you got the zip burn!' I swear it was George!”

The track ‘Home to Us' looks back on growing up in Liverpool's working-class housing estates. McCartney noted that he, Harrison, and Ringo Starr were all “raised in quite poor conditions,” adding that when he describes those neighborhoods to American audiences, “it sounds like Downton Abbey.” The song features Starr on drums and vocals, with the two swapping lines. Backing vocals are provided by Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri. The track is scheduled for release as the second single on 8 May.

Album Background and Release Details

The Boys of Dungeon Lane is McCartney's twenty-first solo studio album, co-produced with Andrew Watt. Their collaboration began in 2021, with sessions running between legs of McCartney's Got Back tour and alternating between Los Angeles and his Hogg Hill Mill studio in East Sussex. McCartney played the majority of instruments across the record.

The album title itself has deep roots. “The boys of Dungeon Lane” is a lyric McCartney used in ‘In Liverpool', an early demo for his 1993 album Off the Ground. Dungeon Lane is a road in the Speke area of Liverpool, running toward Oglet Shore on the Mersey. The album artwork, designed by McCartney's nephew Josh (son of his brother Mike), is inspired by Liverpool street signs and features the Speke postcode L24.

Before the official announcement on 26 March 2026, McCartney teased the project on social media using bird emojis, a nod to the birdwatching history of the Oglet Shore area. Early promotional activity also included updated Google Street View imagery of Dungeon Lane itself.

What we know

• The Boys of Dungeon Lane is scheduled for release on 29 May 2026 and is McCartney's twenty-first solo studio album.
• McCartney hosted a listening event for approximately 50 competition-winning fans at Abbey Road Studios on 5 May 2026, playing the album in full over 90 minutes.
• The album was co-produced with Andrew Watt, with sessions beginning in 2021 and recorded between legs of McCartney's Got Back tour.
• The lead single ‘Days We Left Behind' was released on 26 March 2026.
• The second single ‘Home to Us' features Ringo Starr on drums and vocals, with backing vocals by Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri, and is scheduled for release on 8 May.
• The album artwork was designed by Josh, son of McCartney's brother Mike, and is inspired by Liverpool street signs, featuring the Speke postcode L24.
• The album opener ‘As You Lie There' originated from McCartney's first recording session with Watt, during which McCartney stumbled onto an unfamiliar chord sequence.

The take

McCartney's decision to anchor an entire album in the geography and memory of postwar Liverpool places ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane' in a lineage that includes some of his most enduring work. ‘Penny Lane', ‘In My Life', and ‘She Came In Through the Bathroom Window' all drew on specific Liverpool locations and personal mythology; the difference here is that McCartney is doing it at 83, with the full weight of loss behind him. The Lennon references in ‘Days We Left Behind' and the Harrison hitchhiking stories in ‘Down South' suggest a record that functions partly as a reckoning with absence, which is territory McCartney has historically approached obliquely. The Ringo collaboration on ‘Home to Us' is also significant in context. The two have appeared on each other's projects periodically over the decades, but a track that explicitly revisits their shared working-class Liverpool origins, with Hynde and Spiteri adding vocal texture, carries a different emotional charge than a guest spot. The Andrew Watt production partnership is worth noting as well. Watt has become one of rock's most in-demand collaborators, having worked with Ozzy Osbourne, Eddie Vedder, and Iggy Pop in recent years, and his ability to coax late-career records that feel alive rather than archival is well established. That McCartney played most of the instruments himself, in the spirit of his 1970 solo debut, suggests the sessions were built around spontaneity rather than polish.

Why it matters

For Classic Rock listeners, ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane' represents the first McCartney solo album in more than five years and arrives with an unusually personal frame. The Abbey Road listening event, held in the very studio where The Beatles built their catalog, was a deliberate act of context-setting. McCartney is positioning this record as a document of where he came from, and the presence of Starr, Hynde, and Spiteri signals that the project reaches outward even as its lyrics turn inward. That combination of intimacy and legacy is what separates it from a routine release.

What's next

The second single ‘Home to Us' is scheduled for release on 8 May 2026. The full album ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane' follows on 29 May 2026.

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