I'm trying to make a record. I'm trying to encourage these guys to be as great as they are.
At eighty-three, Paul McCartney continues to make records and meaning in equal measure, releasing his twentieth solo album as a meditation on memory, place, and the people who shaped him. The Boys of Dungeon Lane reaches back through a Liverpool childhood, a band that remade popular music, and decades of misplaced guilt — the last of which a documentary finally helped him set down. It is the portrait of an artist who has never confused legacy with conclusion, and who still finds, in an unfamiliar guitar chord, a reason to begin again.
- For decades McCartney quietly bore the public verdict that he alone had broken the Beatles, a weight that quietly eroded his confidence even when he knew the story was more complicated.
- Peter Jackson's Get Back footage arrived like counter-evidence at a long-delayed trial, showing McCartney not as a tyrant but as someone urgently trying to coax greatness from people he loved.
- The new album channels that liberated perspective into fourteen memory-driven songs, pulling from childhood Liverpool, early hitchhiking adventures across Europe, and a duet with Ringo Starr about where they both began.
- A 2028 wave of Beatles biopics and the spectral possibility of hologram concerts signal that the band's cultural afterlife is accelerating even as its last living architects grow older.
- McCartney meets all of it with the same restless forward lean — still finding unknown chords, still insisting the next record must be better than the last.
Paul McCartney is eighty-three, eating a Marmite-and-hummus bagel in his Soho office, showing off grandchildren on his phone case and scanning a list of old comedies to watch later. He is also, still, making records.
His twentieth solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, is a suite of fourteen memory songs moving through Liverpool childhoods, early Beatles adventures, and family life. A tender ballad honours his parents — his father, a piano-playing crossword obsessive who made sure his son could spell 'phlegm' — while a duet with Ringo Starr revisits their humble origins. One track emerged from a single unfamiliar chord struck during a Los Angeles writing session with producer Andrew Watt; another was recovered whole from a decades-old demo tape his late engineer had refused to discard.
For years, McCartney carried the public verdict that he had broken the Beatles. The headlines said so, and the bitter post-split interviews his bandmates gave seemed to confirm it. Slowly, he began to believe he had been overbearing. Then Peter Jackson's Get Back documentary let him watch the Let It Be sessions as an outside observer. What he saw was not a bully but a man trying to make a record, trying to encourage people he believed in. 'It took a weight off my mind,' he says simply.
The creative restlessness that drove him from Wings to classical oratorios to electronic experiments under a pseudonym has not dimmed. Four Beatles biopics arrive in 2028, with Paul Mescal in the role of McCartney — who tried to teach him Blackbird left-handed, only to discover Mescal already knew it better. Meanwhile, Abba's hologram concert gave McCartney pause: he found himself applauding an empty stage before catching himself, genuinely unsure whether that was strange or wonderful. He suspects the Beatles could do something similar. 'There's always something cooking,' he says.
Paul McCartney is eighty-three years old, sitting in his Soho office with a bagel spread with Marmite and hummus, scanning a printed list of old comedies he might watch with his family later. He has eight grandchildren—four from each of his daughters—and he names their universities as he points to their faces on his phone case. He is, by his own admission, an indulgent grandfather. He is also still making records.
The Boys of Dungeon Lane is his twentieth solo album, and it arrived as a suite of memory songs—fourteen tracks that move through different eras and musical styles, all of them reaching backward. There are songs about his childhood in Liverpool, about birdwatching along the Mersey, about the four men who changed popular music together. "I like to go over memories, because it brings me back to the time," he says. "It brings me back to the people."
McCartney was born in 1942 into a Liverpool still bearing the scars of the war. The city had been bombed relentlessly, but by the time he was old enough to remember, reconstruction was underway and the docks were thriving. His father Jim played piano by ear and loved wordplay—he did crosswords obsessively and made sure his son learned unusual words. "I was the only kid in my class who could spell 'phlegm'," McCartney recalls. On the new album, he pays tribute to his parents in a song called Salesman Saint, a tender ballad that evokes the dancehall jazz they listened to on the radio while living on tea and cigarettes.
The album's opening track, As You Lie There, finds him in full voice, screaming with the intensity of a teenage crush. He wrote it in 2020 during a cup of green tea with producer Andrew Watt in Los Angeles. As they talked, McCartney picked up a guitar and found a chord he didn't recognize—something that intrigued him enough to build a song around it. "I don't know what that chord is," he says. "Somebody classically trained will be able to tell me it's a 'G demented', or whatever, but that started something." Another song, Lost Horizon, came from a demo tape that his late engineer Eddie Klein had archived decades earlier and insisted was worth revisiting. When McCartney listened to it again, he found it was complete—all the lyrics, all the melody—so he copied what was on the cassette and added a little extra guitar.
The album also features a duet with Ringo Starr on a song called Home To Us, where they recall their humble beginnings. On Down South, McCartney writes about hitchhiking across Europe with his bandmates in the early nineteen-sixties, when they decided their gimmick would be bowler hats worn with leather jackets and guitars. "The point about all that, though, is that it bonds you," he says. "So when I came to write with John, we had all these stories and all these experiences. We understood each other very well."
For decades, McCartney carried a different understanding of that partnership's end. When the Beatles broke up, the newspapers blamed him. "The headline on the front of the papers was, 'Paul breaks up the Beatles', and I had to shoulder all of that stuff, even though I knew it wasn't true." The gossip and the bitter interviews his bandmates gave afterward dented his confidence. He began to believe he was overbearing, that he had pushed too hard. Then Peter Jackson's Get Back documentary arrived, and McCartney watched the sessions for Let It Be unfold on screen. "I had a strange view of that period," he says. "It was business hell, and I was blamed for a lot of things." But seeing the footage changed that view entirely. "When I saw the film I thought, 'Oh, no, I'm not like that at all. I'm trying to make a record. I'm trying to encourage these guys to be as great as they are.' So it took a weight off my mind."
McCartney's creative restlessness has never dimmed. After the Beatles, he made lo-fi experimental albums, led the rock band Wings, composed a classical oratorio, and released dance records under the name The Fireman. His philosophy is simple: "I always think, 'The last one was OK. I enjoyed it, but I'm going to do better this time'. You have to have that attitude, just to give yourself something to aim for." Four Beatles biopics are coming in 2028, with actor Paul Mescal playing McCartney. When Mescal visited the office to learn guitar, McCartney tried to teach him how to play Blackbird left-handed. "He came into this office and I thought, 'Well, I'll show him how to do Blackbird'. So I picked up the guitar and started playing... and he played along exactly! I think he knew it better than I did!" McCartney has also been watching Abba's Voyage, the hologram concert experience. "I went to see the Abba show, and I thought it was really good," he says. "We were all applauding and suddenly I realised, 'Wait a minute. They're not here, but I'm applauding them!'" Whether The Beatles might do something similar remains an open question. "There's loads of possibilities," he says. "There's always something cooking."
Notable Quotes
I like to go over memories, because it brings me back to the time. It brings me back to the people.— Paul McCartney, on the themes of his new album
When I saw the film I thought, 'Oh, no, I'm not like that at all. I'm trying to make a record. I'm trying to encourage these guys to be as great as they are.' So it took a weight off my mind.— Paul McCartney, on how Get Back changed his perspective on the Beatles' final sessions
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
You've spent fifty years or more thinking about the Beatles' breakup. What changed when you finally saw Get Back?
I'd built up this whole story in my head about myself—that I was the difficult one, the one pushing too hard. I'd internalized what the papers said, what people believed. Seeing the actual footage, seeing myself in that moment, it was like someone turned on a light. I wasn't the villain of that story. I was just trying to make something good.
And now you're making an album full of memories from that era. Does revisiting those moments feel different now that you've made peace with how it ended?
It does, yes. Before, there was a kind of defensiveness to it. Now I can just... remember. Remember the good parts. The hitchhiking, the bowler hats, the way John and I understood each other without having to say much. That's what the album is really about—not the ending, but the texture of it all.
You mentioned that your father taught you unusual words. Do you think that shaped how you write songs?
Absolutely. He loved language the way some people love music. Crosswords, wordplay, finding the exact right word. That became part of how I think about lyrics. It's not just about the melody—it's about what the words do, how they sit in your mouth.
Paul Mescal came to learn guitar from you. What was that like?
It was humbling, honestly. He'd studied me so carefully that he knew the song better than I did in that moment. There was something beautiful about that—someone caring enough to get it right. I just stepped back and let him do it.
You've been thinking about Abba's hologram concerts. Is that something you'd want to do with The Beatles?
I don't know yet. There's something spooky about it, but also something real—especially if there's a live band. The technology is there. The question is whether it feels true to what The Beatles were. We'll see what cooking.