As a former Beatle and a man invested in burnishing his legacy, Paul McCartney has spent lots of time over the years looking back on his glory days. On his new album, he'll go back even farther. McCartney is 83 now, and as old men are wont to do, he's been thinking about his childhood. The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, his first album since the pleasingly loopy quarantine project McCartney III, is billed as an intimate look at never-before-shared memories of his youth in Liverpool, if you can believe it.
From the sounds of lead single "Days We Left Behind," this will be a soft acoustic affair, though who knows what else Sir Paul has in store. In the meantime, here's what he has to say about the new track:
This is very much a memory song for me. 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.
Listen below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "As You Lie There"
02 "Lost Horizon"
03 "Days We Left Behind"
04 "Ripples In A Pond"
05 "Mountain Top"
06 "Down South"
07 "We Two"
08 "Come Inside"
09 "Never Know"
10 "Home To Us"
11 "Life Can Be Hard"
12 "First Star Of The Night"
13 "Salesman Saint"
14 "Momma Gets By"
The Boys Of Dungeon Lane is out 5/29 via MPL/Capitol. Pre-order it here. McCartney plays the Fonda Theatre in LA this Friday and Saturday.
