The Beatles come home: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr perform duet on new album

For the first time, the two surviving Beatles are performing a duet together.

As Rolling Stone noted, the pair have been playing together since 1962, but they’ve never sung a duet together until now, for McCartney’s new album, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane.”

The song is called “Home to Us,” with McCartney saying it felt natural to have his former bandmate perform with him.

“In writing the song, I’m talking about where we came from,” McCartney said. “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.”

McCartney said he wrote the song and sent it to Starr, who sent a new version, adding a few lines to the chorus.

The songwriter thought the drummer was sending him a message.

“I thought, maybe he doesn’t like it. I rang him, and he said he thought I only wanted him to sing one or two lines, and I said I’d love to hear him sing the whole thing. So we took my first line, Ringo’s second line, and then we had a duet. We’d never done that before. Then we wanted some backing vocals, and I had the idea it would be nice to hear girls. Chrissie Hynde said she’d do it, and Sharleen Spiteri, they’re mates. So they did it,” McCartney said.

The song, according to Rolling Stone, has a heavy dose of nostalgia.” McCartney said some of the song was inspired by Liverpool’s River Mersey and the “secret code” he and bandmate John Lennon had.

“This was a lot of memories of Liverpool for me,” McCartney said, “but also any days we’ve left behind. Everyone’s got them — school, old mates. [The song] has memories of John in the middle, that’s lovely to go back to.”

He would not share the secret code, though.

The album is not only a way back to the Beatles, but it also helps memorialize McCartney’s parents.

“Salesman Saint” pays tribute to his parents.

“I was born in 1942, in the war,” he explained. “I was too young to appreciate that, but my parents weren’t. My dad was a fireman, putting out fires from the bombs. My mum was a nurse and midwife. But they carried on, because they had to. Like people in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere now.”

“The Boys of Dungeon Lane” isn’t the only new music McCartney is producing.

He also appears on The Rolling Stones’ new album, “Foreign Tongues,” on a song recorded in 2023.

This is also not the first time that McCartney and Starr have performed together. The pair performed in 2024 during a McCartney concert in London and sang “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “Helter Skelter.” They also sang together on the Beatles’ final song “Now and Then” and performed with Dolly Parton on her version of “Let It Be,” Consequence reported

“The Boys of Dungeon Lane” will be released on May 29.

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