Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have recorded their first ever full vocal duet together on ‘Home To Us’, the new single from McCartney’s forthcoming album ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’, arriving May 29. The track also features backing vocals from Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri.
by Paul Cashmere
More than 60 years after they first played together in Liverpool, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have finally recorded a true vocal duet. ‘Home To Us’, released today, marks the first time the two surviving Beatles have shared lead vocals across an entire song, adding another chapter to one of music’s most documented creative partnerships.
The song is the second preview from McCartney’s upcoming album ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’. Produced by Andrew Watt, the album has been framed as a deeply autobiographical work centred around McCartney’s childhood memories of post-war Liverpool and the formative experiences that shaped his songwriting.
McCartney first revealed details of the collaboration during a playback session at Abbey Road Studios earlier this week, where 50 fans heard selections from the record. According to McCartney, the song began with Starr contributing a drum track before evolving into something much larger.
“In writing the song I’m talking about where we came from,” McCartney said in a statement. “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.”
The track became a natural extension of the album’s broader themes. While McCartney grew up in Allerton, Starr was raised in Liverpool’s working-class Dingle district. Both neighbourhoods sit deeply within Beatles mythology, but ‘Home To Us’ approaches those origins with reflection rather than nostalgia.
McCartney explained that Starr initially only sang fragments of the chorus after receiving the demo. Concerned his longtime bandmate was not enthusiastic about the song, McCartney contacted him directly and encouraged him to sing the entire track.
“We took my first line, Ringo’s second line, and then we had a duet,” McCartney told fans at Abbey Road. “We’d never done that before.”
Despite decades of collaborations, live performances and guest appearances on solo recordings, McCartney and Starr had never formally recorded a lead vocal duet. Their most recent collaboration came on 2023’s ‘Now And Then’, the Beatles recording built from a John Lennon demo originally abandoned during the Anthology sessions in the 1990s. Advances in AI-assisted audio restoration technology, introduced during Peter Jackson’s ‘Get Back’ project, allowed Lennon’s vocal to be isolated and completed for release.
‘Now And Then’ was widely promoted as the final Beatles recording, but ‘Home To Us’ presents a different kind of milestone. Rather than reconstructing the past, the song captures two musicians still actively creating together in their eighties.
The production also reflects McCartney’s current creative phase. Andrew Watt, whose recent work includes projects with The Rolling Stones and Elton John, co-produced the album across sessions stretching back to 2021. Recording moved between Los Angeles and McCartney’s Hogg Hill Mill studio in East Sussex, often between legs of the ‘Got Back’ tour.
McCartney reportedly played most of the instruments on the album himself, continuing a tradition dating back to his earliest solo records after The Beatles split in 1970. That self-contained recording approach remains one of the defining characteristics of his solo catalogue, from ‘McCartney’ through to ‘Chaos And Creation In The Backyard’ and beyond.
The title ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ also carries historical significance. The phrase first appeared in ‘In Liverpool’, an unreleased demo from the early 1990s during sessions connected to ‘Off The Ground’. Dungeon Lane itself is a real road in the Speke area of Liverpool leading towards Oglet Shore on the River Mersey, a location long associated with local birdwatchers and part of McCartney’s personal geography growing up.
Promotion for the album has leaned heavily into those Liverpool connections. Posters appeared across the city ahead of the announcement, while McCartney’s brother Mike publicly acknowledged that the artwork was designed by his son Josh McCartney. The cover references classic Liverpool street signage and prominently features the Speke postcode L24.
The release also arrives at a time when legacy artists continue to dominate contemporary touring and recording cycles. Recent years have seen veteran musicians increasingly revisit autobiographical themes, often placing personal history ahead of commercial expectations. In McCartney’s case, ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ appears positioned less as a retrospective exercise and more as a continuation of his lifelong storytelling tradition.
‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ Tracklisting:
‘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’
McCartney’s ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ will be released on May 29.
Stay updated with your free Noise11.com daily music news email alert. Subscribe to Noise11 Music News here
Be the first to see NOISE11.com’s newest interviews and special features on YouTube. See things first-Subscribe to Noise11 on YouTube
Follow Noise11.com on social media:
Bluesky
Instagram
Facebook – Comment on the news of the day
X (Twitter)
