Paul McCartney Releases New Single, ‘Days We Left Behind,’ to Be Followed by First Album in Nearly Six Years, ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’

After five years of reports about an album in progress, Paul McCartney released a new single, “Days We Left Behind,” Thursday morning. The single, a love letter to Liverpool, arrived concurrent with the official news that the album he has been working on with producer Andrew Watt is indeed on the way. “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” is due out May 29.

The forthcoming set will be McCartney’s first new album since his pandemic-bred, self-produced “McCartney III” came out in December 2020.

The track list for the album:

A description for the album calls it “his most introspective album to date, taking the listener back to where it all began. These extraordinary new songs find Paul writing with rare openness about his childhood in post-war Liverpool, the resilience of his parents, and early adventures shared with George Harrison and John Lennon long before the world had ever heard of Beatlemania. Like his career, ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’ is musically eclectic and sees Paul across an array of instruments and styles showcasing his broad musicality. There’s Wings-style rock, Beatles-style harmonies, McCartney-style grooves, understated intimacy, melody driven storytelling, character songs – the common thread being Paul.”

McCartney also put up a trailer for the album, consisting mostly of snippets from the first single. A pre-order link can be found here.

“Days We Left Behind” got its premiere airing on the BBC’s Radio Merseyside at 2:50 p.m. U.K. time (10:45 a.m. ET), followed by a clip of McCartney talking about the song.

“Songwriters, you know, and writers in general — what else can you draw on besides the past?” he said in the BBC audio clip. “I mean, you can do the present, but still a lot of the past in that. So anyway, this is the past, you know — it’s just a lot of memories of Liverpool for me, and that involves a little bit in the middle about John.”

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“This is very much a memory song for me,” McCartney added in a statement. “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? 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.”

The new album is helmed by one of the best-known producers of the modern era, Watt, who has said that he got a call to begin working with McCartney soon after he won the Grammy for producer of the year in 2021. Watt has specialized in working on veteran rockers’ projects in recent years, including the Rolling Stones’ “Hackney Diamonds,” Ozzy Osbourne’s “Ordinary Man” and “Patient Number 9” and Elton John’s album with Brandi Carlile, “Who Believes in Angels?” Watt also produced Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem” and has worked on albums by Miley Cyrus, Post Malone, Pearl Jam and Justin Bieber.

The announcement for the album describes its origins five years ago when McCartney and Watt met “for a cup of tea and an exchange of ideas. While playing around on the guitar during the meeting, Paul happened upon a chord that even he — the world’s most successful living songwriter — didn’t recognise. Undeterred and driven by his experimental nature, Paul carried on changing one note, then another, until he had a three-chord sequence — which Watt suggested they should record. This session yielded the album’s opening track, ‘As You Lie There.”‘Encouraged by his new producer, Paul would flesh out the new track, playing the majority of instruments – much in the spirit of his 1970 solo debut album, ‘McCartney.’”

The description continues with an explanation of how “Paul’s packed schedule meant that the album was recorded in tight and efficient sessions between legs of global tour dates spanning five years and alternating between Los Angeles and Sussex. With no record label pressure and no deadline, the pair were able to make the album to their own timeline and satisfaction.”

McCartney’s album looks to be rich with nostalgic, autobiographical imagery. The title location, Dungeon Lane, is a very narrow road in Speke, a suburb of Liverpool, adjacent to what is now Liverpool John Lennon Airport. The street is within a few minutes’ walking distance of the childhood homes of both McCartney and fellow Beatle George Harrison.

The title of “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” had already come to light earlier in the week, first via a teaser campaign in which posters with a logo bearing those words were plastered around Liverpool. McCartney’s brother, Michael McGear McCartney, confirmed that the posters were related to his brother’s forthcoming album with a social media post saying the logo was designed by his son: “Josh saw this teaser for r kids new album ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’ in Liverpool yestas. It was familiar to him as he had designed the Dungeon Lane(Speke) artwork for his Uncle.”

Then McCartney’s account texted fans with a link to a Google Maps page, which showed an image of a boy running across the actual Dungeon Lane holding a sign with the album logo.

The nostalgic theme was further foreshadowed when McCartney took to his social media Wednesday to post a black-and-white photo of himself believed to be from the late ’50s.

Further clues seemed to come with McCartney using emojis of birds in his recent media. The beach near Dungeon Lane is said to have been a popular birdwatching area, and in the book “Many Years Now,” the singer described having a guide to birds he carried around as a boy.

McCartney had previously used the phrase “the boys of Dungeon Lane” in a 1991 demo for a song titled “In Liverpool.” Lyrics for the officially unreleased song included the lines “Walking with the boys of Dungeon Lane / Aimlessly towards the cast iron shore.” (The phrase “cast iron shore,” referring to a coastal area in Liverpool, also appeared in the John Lennon-written Beatles song “Glass Onion.”) There was some fan speculation that he might finally record “In Liverpool” for this new album, but it seems to have existed primarily as a seed for what he has finally delved further into 35 years later.

The new single and album news came the day before McCartney is set to do a two-night stand at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, his first live dates since wrapping up a 2025 arena tour in November. No other concert plans have yet been announced for 2026.

Prospective ticket buyers who had pre-registered for McCartney’s two concerts at the 1200-capacity Fonda were informed by Ticketmaster on Wednesday as to whether they had been selected for the chance to go, with the vast majority, naturally, coming away empty-handed. The disparity between supply and demand for these shows was similar to when McCartney played three nights at New York’s 575-capacity Bowery Ballroom in February 2025.