Ripples in a Pond

“Ripples in a Pond” is a track from Paul McCartney’s 2026 album “The Boys Of Dungeon Lane“. A love song inspired by Paul’s wife Nancy, it was first written in 2015 before being left aside for several years.

In a June 2026 interview with the Song Exploder podcast, Paul explained that the track was properly recorded in 2022 with producer Andrew Watt.

In his Valentine’s Day message on February 14, 2023, Paul had shared a photo of two red roses in a glass, placed on a mixing desk in a recording studio. The image appeared to reveal part of a working song title, showing the text “[…]ipples on a pond”.

Where were you when the first bit of this idea for this song came to you?

I was in East Sussex, England, on my farm where I live. I was sitting around enjoying a day off, and that’s normally when I write songs. If I’m lucky enough to know that I’ve got the next three or four hours, nobody’s going to interrupt me. And I was actually thinking about my missus, Nancy, and thinking, you know, how lucky I am to know and love someone like her. We’ve known each other quite a long time, and it’s a very interesting relationship. We’re nothing like each other.

How so?

I mean, I’m English, she’s American; she’s very practical, gets things done. I’m much more sort of whimsical. I will get things done, but in maybe not as practical a way. But we know each other, and we know how to be with each other. So I was just thinking about how blessed I am. You know, anyone who’s in a good relationship with someone is inevitably really blessed. And it’s nice when you’re thinking that to introduce that idea into a song.

Paul McCartney – Interview with Song Explorer, June 2026

This is from 2015, and you’ve had albums come out since then. How come this song didn’t appear on those earlier records? Did it feel like it wasn’t finished yet?

Yeah, I think that’s the thing. You sometimes will write a thing and be not entirely convinced. So you kind of put it a little bit on the back shelf. You know, songs can just lay around, and I mean to finish them, but I’m on tour somewhere, so I don’t really have the time to get to grips with it. But yeah, this one languished around a little bit.

I can see that in these versions, you kind of go back and forth between whether you’re singing to her or whether you’re singing about her. Was that something you debated for a while?

I debated it for a little while, because — you do, doing anything creative. You’re always thinking, “Do I do that? I’ll do this with it.” But I had to make the decision: am I going to tell this song directly to Nancy, or am I going to tell this to a friend and say, “You know, sometimes I think of her”? But pretty soon afterwards I thought, it’s not direct enough. I think I’d rather have it coming directly from me to her. So I changed all the “she”s and “her”s to “you” and “yours.”

I was wondering where the phrase “ripples in a pond” came from — how that came to you, and what that means to you.

I like the “ripples in a pond” idea because it’s a good image for me. For instance, if people pray, the idea is that you pray and it creates ripples, and it goes and it reaches the deity you’re praying to. I like the idea of saying something and it ripples out into the universe. And I like the idea, in a romance, of saying “Let’s see how far it goes,” because you can’t plan it. You can hope it’s going to work, and you can hope it’s going to work out well, but there is an element of guesswork where you’re just saying, you know, fingers crossed.

Paul McCartney – Interview with Song Explorer, June 2026

So this one [“Ripples In A Pond”] I’d done some work in Sussex on this, we kind of virtually recorded it all, and I took it to Andrew. But I said to him, “Yeah, come on, man, you’re a pop producer. [On] this one you should, like, do a bit more of a pop production on it,” you know, because it’s that kind of a song. So he did. He started swearing at his engineer. Get that off air. He doesn’t talk like that. But anyway, so, yeah, he did… He sort of popped it up a bit. It’s called “Ripples In A Pond.”

Paul McCartney – From Exclusive Commentary Edition Digital Album – Recorded during the “Boys of Dungeon Lane” listening session at Abbey Road, May 5, 2026

A very upbeat song with McCartney’s vocals pushed front and center and with a bouncy pop production before delving into a spacy, inventive bridge. Written for and about Shevell, McCartney changed the song from third person, “she” to second person, “you,” to personalize it more for his wife. During the playback, McCartney even looked straight at his wife of 15 years as he mouthed lyrics including, “I love you more than I ever did before.” McCartney recorded the song in England and then sent it Watt to make it bouncier and dancier.

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

McCartney described it as “basically a love song to Nancy,” to considerable awww-ing from the small congregation. He originally wrote it in the third person, about a “she,” “but I decided it is much better to just do direct. So I changed the ‘she’ to ‘you,’ so it just means a bit more.”

McCartney indicated that he thinks the production on this track is more poppy than the rest of the album — at his own instigation. “When we first met, one of the things in the back of my mind was, [Watt] has done Justin Bieber and a lot of kind of modern pop records. So on this one I said, ‘well, ‘Andrew, you haven’t done that… You’ve been a bit quiet… On this one, I really do think I’ll hand it over to you.” He gave Watt instructions to “make it a little bit more sort of dancey, a little bit more sort of up. So I saw another side to him… It’s a nice one and you did a nice production on that track.”

That led Watt to (presumably) joke: “I’ll do a pop remix of the whole album.”

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

Lyrics

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