Photo: Mary McCartney

For the first time after a five-year lapse, Paul McCartney is preparing for the release of his new solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. Due on May 29 via MPL/ Capitol Records, the forthcoming album recalls the musician’s rearing, the parts of the past that informed the future success of the Fab Four, while relying on intimacy as a stimulant: the backdrop of beginning, written with openness and the quality of nearly 70 years of experience. As a preview, McCartney has unveiled the album’s first single, “Days We Left Behind.” 

McCartney regards the imminent arrival as “rare and revealing glimpses into memories never-before shared, along with some newly inspired love songs.” The Boys of Dungeon Lane is an introspective examination of one of the best-led lives in the spotlight, shaped by accounts of post-war Liverpool and early adventures with George Harrison and John Lennon, before the Beatles were a band, not just a hard-backed pest. 

Notably, the album’s title is drawn from the debut single “Days We Left Behind,” a pared-down, intimate reflection on the past that recounts memories with the permanence of a tattoo: “No one can erase/ The days we left behind.” 

Taking its intent further, McCartney 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.”

He continues, “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.”

The creation of the album began five years prior, when McCartney and producer Andrew Watt sat for a cup of tea and traded ideas. While plucking the guitar, the former Beatle landed on a chord he’d never heard before. The experimental moment enforced a three-chord sequence, which Watt encouraged him to record. 

The aforementioned session informed “As You Lie There,” the album’s opening number, and inspired a stylistic return to his 1970 solo debut, McCartney, which centered the musician’s skills on almost every instrument. Due in part to the artist’s exceptionally busy live schedule, the making of the album happened at multiple locations, Los Angeles and Sussex, between global tour dates.  

Aiming to produce a familiar throughline to his own career trajectory, The Boys of Dungeon Lane marries the many shades of McCartney’s talents as a songwriter, instrumentalist and storyteller. 

Listen to “Days We Left Behind” below. 
Pre-order/saveThe Boys of Dungeon Lane.

Track list:

As You Lie There
Lost Horizon
Days We Left Behind
Ripples in a Pond
Mountain Top
Down South
We Two

Come Inside
Never Know
Home to Us
Life Can Be Hard
First Star of the Night
Salesman Saint
Momma Gets By