“Home to Us,” the new single from Paul McCartney, was released on May 8, 2026, and it marks a moment fans of The Beatles have been waiting decades to hear.
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Home to Us: A Historic First for Two Beatles
McCartney and Ringo Starr spent years side by side as members of The Beatles, recording some of the most celebrated music in history.
In all those decades, they had never recorded a formal duet together as solo artists, until now.
McCartney announced the collaboration at a private listening event held at Abbey Road Studios on May 5, 2026.
He described the significance plainly: “It’s a duet. We’ve never done that. Ringo’s never just taken a duet with one of the Beatles.”
“Home to Us” arrives as the second single from the upcoming album, following “Days We Left Behind,” released on March 26, 2026.
Both tracks come from The Boys of Dungeon Lane, set for release on May 29, 2026, on Capitol Records.
The listening event at Abbey Road gave the announcement an appropriate setting.
It was on those same stages where McCartney and Starr made some of the most important music of the 20th century.
This time, they came back not to revisit the past but to record something entirely new.
The Song That Started With Ringo’s Drums
The origin of this track is unusual: it did not begin with a lyric or a melody but with a drum performance.
Roughly two years before the album’s release, Ringo Starr visited producer Andrew Watt’s Los Angeles studio for an informal session.
Starr sat down and played drums without any specific song in mind.
McCartney later heard that recording and was drawn to it immediately.
He built an entire song around those drums, writing the lyrics and melody from the ground up.
Once the demo was ready, he sent it to Starr expecting a full vocal collaboration across the track.
There was a misunderstanding.
Starr thought McCartney only wanted a couple of lines in the chorus, and he sent back a version with minimal vocals.
McCartney picked up the phone to clarify: “I rang him, and he said he thought I only wanted him to sing one or two lines.”
McCartney made clear he wanted Starr’s voice throughout the whole song.
Starr returned to the studio and recorded a complete performance.
The structure they landed on has the two men alternating vocal lines one by one across the track.
As McCartney described it: “We took my first line, Ringo’s second line, and then we had a duet.”
The song runs three minutes and twelve seconds and never wastes a moment.
Home to Us and the Liverpool Roots
The title of the song is not accidental.
McCartney wrote “Home to Us” with Ringo Starr specifically in mind and drew the concept from their shared Liverpool upbringing.
Both men were born and raised in working-class areas of Liverpool in the 1940s and grew up knowing modest streets and tight-knit neighborhoods.
McCartney explained the emotional core of the lyric: “Even though where we lived was pretty rough, it was home to us.”
The song carries no resentment about those years.
It treats those difficult circumstances as something worth remembering with warmth, not shame.
The album’s title, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, comes from Dungeon Lane, a real lane in the Allerton area of Liverpool.
Forthlin Road, where McCartney grew up, runs nearby.
The lane connects the kinds of streets both men knew as young boys before The Beatles changed everything around them.
Naming the album after that place roots the whole record in a shared geography.
“Home to Us” is the song that carries that meaning most directly, and it is the emotional center of the project.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane: Album Details
McCartney’s twenty-first solo studio album represents one of the longer creative periods of his recording career.
Sessions ran from 2021 through 2025, recorded at Hogg Hill Mill, his East Sussex studio, and at facilities in Los Angeles.
Work continued between tour legs, fitting around McCartney’s extensive touring schedule over those four years.
Andrew Watt co-produced the album alongside McCartney across the full length of those sessions.
Watt has collaborated with major rock and pop artists over the past decade and brings a direct, physical energy to the production.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane contains 14 tracks and runs 47 minutes and 7 seconds.
The album arrives six years after McCartney’s previous solo release, McCartney III, which came out in December 2020.
That gap makes this album one of the most anticipated solo records of McCartney’s post-Beatles career.
“Days We Left Behind,” the lead single from the same album, launched the campaign on March 26, 2026.
The album follows a long line of celebrated solo records, stretching back to early classics like Band on the Run, which cemented McCartney’s identity as a solo force in the 1970s.
Guest Vocalists and Recording Credits
Beyond the McCartney and Starr vocal pairing, “Home to Us” features two additional voices that complete the track’s sound.
Chrissie Hynde, the founder and frontwoman of The Pretenders, contributes backing vocals.
Sharleen Spiteri, lead singer of Texas, also lends her voice to the recording.
McCartney explained his reasoning for choosing female backing vocalists: “I had the idea it would be nice to hear girls.”
The combination of two male lead vocalists and two female backing vocalists gives the track an unusual warmth and texture.
Ringo Starr is the only guest drummer on the entire album.
McCartney plays drums on every other track, a practice he has maintained since his earliest solo releases in the 1970s.
Starr’s drum performance was not an overdub added after the song was written.
It was the first thing recorded, the seed from which the entire song grew.
That origin story gives the track its unusual intimacy: the collaboration began before McCartney had written a single word.
What Home to Us Means for Both Artists
Both McCartney and Starr have remained active in the years since The Beatles, each building a substantial solo catalog and continuing to perform live.
Starr keeps a demanding touring pace with his All-Starr Band, and his 2026 tour dates show no signs of slowing.
McCartney continues to fill stadiums around the world, connecting audiences of all ages to a catalog that stretches from the early 1960s to the present.
Their last shared credit on a major release was the 2023 Beatles reunion track “Now and Then,” which used AI audio restoration to reunite all four original members.
That project looked backward, assembling something from the past.
This one is different.
Two men who have known each other since the 1950s chose to walk into a studio together in 2024 and make something that did not exist before.
For any listener who grew up with The Beatles, that choice carries real weight.
The release of “Home to Us” on May 8, 2026, ahead of the full album on May 29, gives fans one of the most meaningful new recordings either man has released in years.