Paul McCartney reveals first ever duet with Ringo Starr, Home To Us, at Abbey Road playback

I was in Studio Two at Abbey Road on the evening of May 5 when Paul McCartney let slip the detail everyone had been whispering about: Home To Us, a song on his upcoming album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, is his first ever duet with Ringo Starr. For a room of 50 fans the moment landed like a small, private headline — the sort of Beatles-related novelty that still manages to feel intimate rather than staged.

The song itself arrives on an album due May 29, McCartney’s follow up to 2020’s McCartney III. The record is being framed as unusually introspective, a collection of memory pieces from Liverpool and the early friendships that predated Beatlemania. But Home To Us plants its flag in both nostalgia and unexpected warmth: it’s the only track on the LP to feature a guest drummer, and that drummer is Ringo.

At the playback Paul explained the process with a kind of offhand practicality that makes him easy to believe. He and producer Andrew Watt built most of the songs themselves, Paul playing the bulk of the instruments in a mode that briefly recalled the DIY spirit of his 1970 solo debut. Ringo, Paul said, came by the studio and drummed a bit. Then a song was shaped around him.

‘Ringo went round to the studio and drummed a bit. I said to Andrew, we should make a track and send it to him. So this song is done totally with Ringo in mind,’ Paul said. ‘I made the song around that idea and sent it to Ringo. He sent me back a version where he just added some lines to the chorus, so 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.’

The duet is literal and warm. On the recording Paul takes the first line, Ringo the second; the voices sit next to each other rather than blend into a single voice. Later in the session Paul decided the track could use female backing vocals. He called Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri — both friends — and they turned up harmonies that give the chorus a conversational lift, like neighbors joining a singalong.

Hearing the finished track in Abbey Road’s famous room felt like watching an old photograph come to life. There was a hush when the song opened, a small murmur when Ringo’s voice kicked in, then the inevitable applause at the end. Fans reacted less like concertgoers and more like family at a reunion: moved, a little astonished, ready with a million ‘remember when’ questions.

Paul’s description of the song’s lyrical frame is plain and unshowy. He’s talking about place and resilience, about coming from ‘nothing’ and building a life. He used Ringo’s memories of the Dingle — childhood toughness, walking home from work and getting mugged — as a pivot. The result is not a museum piece. It feels like storytelling with worn-in instruments and a room for voices to pass the tale along.

Production credit goes to Andrew Watt, who helps steer the record away from any ossified Beatles nostalgia and toward something more contemporary-sounding while still rooted in live performance. Paul remains very much the craftsman at the center: arranging, playing, deciding where a voice should sit. That he chose to hand over a big vocal part to Ringo is telling; it underlines a trust that predates both of them being rock elders.

The album teaser single Days We Left Behind did the heavy lifting earlier this spring, but Home To Us gives fans something else: the idea of bandmates, older now, still trading lines and jokes through music. The new single with Ringo was set for release on May 8; the album follows later in the month.

Meanwhile, Ringo hasn’t been idle. His own solo record Long Long Road arrived April 24, featuring St. Vincent, Sheryl Crow and Billy Strings, and produced by T-Bone Burnett. In recent interviews he’s talked about country music’s current turn and the way players and producers are reshaping sounds once pigeonholed by genre. That curiosity shows why these two veterans still seek out surprises for each other.

Why should fans care? Because even after decades of Beatles lore, those small creative choices — who sings which line, who gets called to add a harmony — still tell us something about the friendships that made the music in the first place. At Abbey Road the crowd left smiling, not just because they had heard a track, but because they had witnessed a new, small story added to a very old one.