Home to Us

“Home to Us” is a track from the album “The Boys Of Dungeon Lane“, released in 2026. It is built around a drum performance that Ringo Starr had laid down at producer Andrew Watt’s studio. Paul fashioned a song around the recording, drawing on the shared experience of growing up in the rougher districts of Liverpool — Ringo in the Dingle, Paul in Allerton — and the two share lead vocals in a line-by-line duet, the first of its kind between them. Backing vocals were contributed by Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders and Sharleen Spiteri of Texas.

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. In writing the song I’m talking about where we came from. 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. 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. 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.

Paul McCartney – From the press release

Beatle fans will go nuts for this nostalgic track that features Ringo Starr on drums and Starr and McCartney trading vocals line by line as they sing about growing up. But it didn’t come together without some confusion, McCartney explained.

“I saw Ringo and said I worked with this guy Andrew. Ringo came over to Andrew’s studio and played a little bit of drums,” he explained, but then things went slightly off the rails with misunderstandings. Starr thought he’d given Watt enough to create a song, but was “a bit pissed,” McCartney says when it wasn’t enough. McCartney really liked Starr’s contribution and created a song around growing up in Liverpool. “Even though where we lived was a little rough, it was home to us,” McCartney said.

McCartney sent the demo to Starr and asked him to sing on it and, misunderstanding, Starr only sang on the chorus, leading McCartney to think Starr didn’t like the song. Eventually, they talked through everything, and Starr came back, added more drums and the two turned the song into true collaboration.

“Ringo’s never done a duet with one of the Beatles,” McCartney said with a laugh. Not surprising, it’s probably the most Beatle-esque track on the album, with tempo shifts, key changes and layered vocals with assists from the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde and Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri.

From Billboard, April 17, 2026 – From the “Boys of Dungeon Lane” listening session, April 16, 2026

McCartney explained how he had Starr come by Watt’s studio just to lay down some drum tracks, initially, without even a song to necessarily play along to. “I think Ringo thought that all he had to do was play a little bit of drums, and Andrew would make some marvellous thing out of it.” It wasn’t that easy, and this isolated drum track got set aside, with the suggestion that maybe Ringo was “a bit pissed” that perhaps nothing would come of it. Then later McCartney asked Watt to pull it up to “just see what he did, out of curiosity… I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really good… We should make the track that Ringo hoped, and then get it over to him and complete the circle.’”

McCartney and Watt then constructed a song around the drum track, sending it to Starr to sing on. “Ringo got the wrong idea,” he said, noting that when he sent it back, he’d only sung on a little of it. “I was thinking, ‘Oh, he doesn’t like it.’ … He thought I maybe just wanted him to sing on the chorus . … I said, ‘Did you not like it?’” After Starr said explained he figured they only wanted a little out of him, “I said, ‘No, it’d be great if you sing the whole thing.’” After Starr followed through, McCartney and Watt came up with the final scheme: “We decided to give one line to me, the next line to Ringo, one line to me. It was really nice, because we’ve never done that.” (McCartney did want backing vocals, too, but brought in Chrissie Hynde and Sherleen Spiteri of the British rock band Texas for those duties.)

This is another memory song for the album, expressing the idea that “even though where we lived was pretty rough, it was home to us. … You had mates and you made the best of it, and you had a great time.”

From Variety, April 17, 2026 – From the “Boys of Dungeon Lane” listening session, April 16, 2026

Now, you you guys have a duet coming out on his album that is coming out next month, right? That’s exciting. Were you jealous? That’s the first time you you done a duet together.

Yes. But where it came from is so crazy because the producer of that record lives just down the block. And I went down and there was a kit in in his studio and he played guitar and we jammed. And then I thought I was started making a record. I said, “Andrew, send me that bit we did of the jamming.” And he never did. But anyway, underneath the duo that Paul and I do, the song, it started with my drums from that day two years ago. And then Paul got the song and put everything else on it. So it was like, it was in reverse. The drums are off first.

And then you laid the vocals…

It’s really great. It’s amusing and it’s very real cuz that’s where we come from.

Ringo Starr – Interview with Jimmy Kimmel, April 21, 2026

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