Two Beatles. One song. First time ever. “Home to Us,” the new duet from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, is out now on MPL/Capitol, and the weight of what it represents is matched by the warmth of the track itself.
The song is the second single from McCartney’s forthcoming album ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane,’ due May 29. It started simply enough: McCartney and producer Andrew Watt invited Starr to lay down a drum track. Then the scope expanded. Starr is the only guest drummer on the entire album, and “Home to Us” became something neither had done before in over five decades of working alongside each other.
McCartney wrote the song with Starr specifically in mind, drawing on their shared working-class Liverpool roots. Starr initially planned to contribute only a line or two. McCartney pushed for more. “I rang him and he said he thought I only wanted him to sing one or two lines,” McCartney recalled. “So we took my first line, Ringo’s second line, and then we had a duet. We’d never done that before.”
The emotional core of the track is rooted in place and memory. McCartney explains it directly: “In writing the song I’m talking about where we came from. 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.”
Backing vocals come from Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri, both friends of McCartney who stepped in after he felt the track needed female voices. The result is a song with real texture and genuine emotional depth, built around alternating verses and a shared chorus that sounds completely natural.
‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’ is framed as an autobiographical survey of McCartney’s post-war Liverpool childhood. He plays most instruments on the record, echoing his 1970 solo debut ‘McCartney.’ The lead single, “Days We Left Behind,” arrived in March. The full album arrives May 29.
“Home to Us” is the first original vocal duet McCartney and Starr have ever recorded. Their previous collaboration, the 2023 Beatles track “Now and Then,” was built around a John Lennon vocal originally recorded in 1994 and restored using AI technology introduced to them by director Peter Jackson. That was billed as the final Beatles song. This is something different: Two surviving friends from Liverpool, singing together, for the first time.