Paul McCartney is back with a new single, “Days We Left Behind,” which will appear on the former Beatle’s first album in five years, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, out May 29.
Like much of the album, “Days We Left Behind” is steeped in McCartney’s childhood memories, with the LP even drawing its title from one of the song’s lyrics. Dungeon Lane is a street leading down to a beach in the Liverpool neighborhood of Speke, where McCartney spent some time as a child.
“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?” McCartney said in a statement. “It’s just a lot of memories of Liverpool. It involves a bit in the middle about John [Lennon] 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 Boys of Dungeon Lane marks McCartney’s 18th solo LP and follows 2020’s McCartney III. The album came about after McCartney met with go-to rock producer Andrew Watt. While noodling on a guitar as they spoke, McCartney somehow hit upon a chord he didn’t recognize; he quickly turned that into a three-chord progression, which became the album’s first track, “As You Lie There.”
McCartney and Watt continued to work on the album during sessions that were scheduled in between McCartney’s busy touring schedule. The album was alternately recorded at studios in Los Angeles and Sussex, England.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane comes at a moment when McCartney has been doing a lot of reflecting on his past. Along with his involvement in Sam Mendes’ four-part Beatles biopic, McCartney recently partook in a documentary about his time with Wings, Man on the Run, which was directed by Morgan Neville and released in February. Interviews from that project were also turned into an installment of Audible’s Words + Music series, which was released earlier this month.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane Track List
1. “As You Lie There”
2. “Lost Horizon”
3. “Days We Left Behind”
4. “Ripples in a Pond”
5. “Mountain Top”
6. “Down South”
7. “We Two”
8. “Come Inside”
9. “Never Know”
10. “Home to Us”
11. “Life Can Be Hard”
12. “First Star of the Night”
13. “Salesman Saint”
14. “Momma Gets By”
