Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have released their first official duet on “Home to Us,” a song rooted in Liverpool childhoods and shaped through a mix of sessions, miscommunication, and collaboration history that stretches back to before the Beatles.
On a bouncy new track called “Home to Us,” Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr go back to the places they came from—Liverpool streets, rough days, and the kind of small comforts that keep you going when the world doesn’t.
The duet arrives as part of McCartney’s twentieth solo album. ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane.’ It follows the lead single “Days We Left Behind. ” and in its opening exchange. the two trade verses about the homes they barely had. and the way they still felt like home. “The place we used to live in. / you could say it wasn’t much / But it was home to us. ” McCartney sings. Ringo answers, “And you could be forgiven / if you thought that it was rough / But it was home to us.”.
Later, they sing in a shared refrain as “the roses in the yard began to wilt, and then they turned to dust,” ending again with “But it was home to us.”
The release is being billed as the first official duet between Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. That description isn’t fully accurate when you look at the details of their recorded history. The duo already share vocals on Ringo’s “Walk With You. ” the Lennon-penned “Grow Old With Me. ” and the coda to McCartney’s “Beautiful Night.” McCartney. meanwhile. has built a body of “Ringo Songs” over the years—writing for Starr including Lennon co-writes like “Yellow
Submarine” and “With a Little Help From My Friends. ” along with McCartney writing “Six O’Clock” and “Private Property.” Even the arrangement of Starr’s biggest hits contains McCartney fingerprints: Paul takes a kazoo solo on Ringo’s #1 hit “You’re Sixteen (You’re Beautiful And You’re Mine).” And the three “Threetles”—Paul. George. and Ringo—appear together on “All Those Years Ago” (1981). “Free As a Bird” (1994). “Real Love” (1995). and most recently “Now And Then” (2023).
Even so, “Home to Us” was written especially with Ringo in mind. The result is a song that feels intentionally built around their shared memories of Liverpool life.
That sense of closeness comes with a second kind of reality: how complicated it can be to make their direct collaboration happen in practice. The track is buoyed by backing vocals from The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde and Texas’ Sharleen Spliteri. Hynde has duetted with Ringo on “Don’t Hang Up” and has a long relationship with both McCartney and Starr. built partly through a friendship with Paul through Linda McCartney in the early ‘80s—centered around their mutual animal rights activism. She and Paul shared the stage at the 1999 Linda McCartney tribute and the 2023 Taylor Hawkins tribute concert.
Behind the harmonies, though, the process has looked messier than the myth. McCartney and Starr’s relationship itself predates the Beatles: the two met while Ringo was drumming for Rory and the Hurricanes in the Liverpool ballroom circuit. Starr replaced Pete Best once the band was signed, and became a fixture in 20th Century legend. But when it comes to the mechanics of working together recently. there has been “some slight awkwardness. ” including needing to be persuaded to revisit “Now and Then. ” a track the Threetles spent one day on in 1995. The music video for “Now and Then” shows Paul and Ringo recording independently in their home studios.
For “Home to Us. ” the track was “hodgepodged” from several back-and-forth sessions with “some slight miscommunication.” McCartney describes how it started as a drum demo for producer Andrew Watt. then shifted after Watts sent something back. “He sent me back a version where he just added some lines to the chorus. so I thought. maybe he doesn’t like it. ” McCartney recalls. “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.”.
That mix—Liverpool nostalgia on the surface, collaboration friction underneath—runs through the song’s emotional architecture. It’s not hard to hear why: the lyrics keep pulling you toward what was familiar, even when the street outside wasn’t.
Ringo hails from The Dingle, “an infamously rough-and-tumble sector of Liverpool,” and he feared being mugged on his walks home. McCartney’s family moved between homes as matriarch Mary was stationed as a midwife. and they fared only slightly better—yet they kept their heads on straight. In “Home to Us. ” that sense of survival becomes part of the melody: “We didn’t worry where the road was going to lead us to / There wasn’t time to make a fuss / ‘cause that was all we knew / The world around us wasn’t safe. / the place was falling down / But that was my / And it was all I knew / ‘Cause it was home to us.”.
There was even talk that “Home to Us” might be performed on the Saturday Night Live stage this weekend. but McCartney went another route. He teamed with his regular live band and a few ringers—drummer Chad Smith (Chili Peppers) and backup vocalist Ingrid Michaelson. He performed “Days We Left Behind,” “Band On the Run,” and an impromptu “Coming Up” over the end credits. Off-air. he was joined by Will Ferrell on cowbell and treated studio 8H to “Drive My Car” and “A Hard Day’s Night.”.
In the background of all that, one older offer still hovers: Lorne Michaels’ 1976 offer for the ex-Beatles to reunite for $3,000 remains unclaimed.
“Home to Us” is streaming now, preceding ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’ on May 29.
Paul McCartney Ringo Starr Home to Us The Boys of Dungeon Lane Liverpool roots Chrissie Hynde Sharleen Spliteri Chad Smith Ingrid Michaelson Andrew Watt Now and Then