Paul McCartney announces new album The Boys of Dungeon Lane

Legendary singer-songwriter Paul McCartney has announced his eighteenth solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, out May 29 via MPL/Capitol. McCartney released his last album, One Hand Clapping, alongside band Wings in 2024. His forthcoming LP, however, will be the artist’s first solo project in five years.

The LP, whose title nods to the town in which McCartney spent much of his childhood in quaint seaside town Speke, will track a course through the musician’s childhood in postwar Liverpool, his love for his parents, and early encounters with future Beatles bandmates George Harrison and John Lennon, as well as some “newly-inspired” love songs. A video companion to the announcement shows a group of young boys moving backwards through time in a vintage diner.

“Days We Left Behind,” the 14-track album’s lead single, is a soft, quavering track that finds the artist looking back on the early memories that shaped him and still define him today. Over a gentle acoustic riff and McCartney’s signature evocative piano, the musician looks wistfully to the “smoky bars and cheap guitars” that accompanied the innocence and urgency of his youth. “I do often wonder if I’m just writing about the past,” McCartney said in a statement accompanying the album’s announcement, “but then I think: how can you write about anything else?”