Paul McCartney Details Nostalgic New Album 'The Boys Of Dungeon Lane'

Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney has announced that his 19th solo album—his first in six years—will arrive in just two months.

His forthcoming album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, will be released on Friday, 29 May. To accompany the announcement, the Beatles icon has unveiled the first single from the album, Days We Left Behind.

The theme of Paul McCartney’s music in 2026 is nostalgia, as he looks back on his formative years in Liverpool and his entry into the music industry. He unveils “never-before-shared” stories for the first time on his first album since 2020’s McCartney III.

You can listen to Days We Left Behind below and pre-order/pre-save The Boys of Dungeon Lane here.

BBC notes that the musician’s 2020 album, McCartney III, was primarily recorded while he was alone in lockdown, playing nearly all of the instruments and handling the production. In contrast, The Boys of Dungeon Lane was created alongside producer Andrew Watt (Ozzy Osbourne, Miley Cyrus, Pearl Jam).

The Boys of Dungeon Lane has been described as McCartney’s “most introspective album to date,” per NME. The record finds the musician “in a candid, vulnerable and deeply reflective mood” as he details his childhood in post-war Liverpool, the resilience of his parents, and his early journeys with John Lennon and George Harrison, “long before the world had ever heard of Beatlemania.”

In addition to the reflective vibes, McCartney’s wistful thoughts are captured musically, where he utilises “Wings-style rock,” “Beatles-style harmonies,” and “McCartney-style grooves.”

Discussing Days We Left Behind, McCartney called it a “memory song.” He explained, “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?”

He continued, “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.”

In November 2023, The Beatles released Now And Then—a song written by John Lennon in 1978 that was touted as a Beatles “reunion” track in 1995.

Now And Then was written and sung by Lennon, worked on by bandmates Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison and completed by McCartney and Starr—with the help of AI—four decades later.