McCartney expands Dungeon Lane with three unreleased songs

The digital edition arrives on 7 October and the marble double LP in December; the May original that topped the UK albums chart is nominated for the Mercury Prize.

Paul McCartney will issue a special edition of The Boys of Dungeon Lane digitally on 7 October 2026. The expanded set runs to 18 tracks, adding four recordings to the original 14-track album, which came out on 29 May 2026 and reached number one in the UK and number five in the US.

The additions are three previously unreleased songs recorded during the 2021–25 sessions with producer Andrew Watt — 'City Fox', 'One Night Stand' and 'Chelsea Boots' — plus a new flip mix of the duet 'Home to Us' with Ringo Starr. Pre-orders are available through the artist's official store and other retailers.

A physical 2LP edition follows on 9 December 2026, limited to orange and blue marble vinyl and carrying a zoetrope etching. New artwork for the package is a silkscreened collage by Kate Gibb, assembled from more than 100 images drawn from McCartney's personal collection. The original album is nominated for the Mercury Prize.

A solo run still in motion

McCartney's path from the Beatles to a solo catalogue that began with McCartney in 1970 has rarely stood still. Ram followed in 1971; Band on the Run arrived in 1973 and remains one of the fixed points of that first decade. The songwriting partnership with John Lennon is the most successful in modern music history; the solo years have been a long demonstration that the melodic gift did not depend on that pairing alone. The work since has moved through pop, classical pieces, ballads and electronica, a showcase of eclecticism that marks his writing as clearly as the melodic bass playing and wide tenor range first heard with the Beatles.

In the present decade the sequence has included McCartney III in 2020 and McCartney III Imagined in 2021, then the live sessions release One Hand Clapping in 2024. A further 2026 title, the soundtrack Man on the Run, sits alongside The Boys of Dungeon Lane in the same calendar year. The May album, a full studio set rather than a companion or archive project, went straight to the top of the UK albums chart and to number five in the US — a commercial landing few artists still manage more than half a century after their first hits.

Returning to those Watt sessions for three finished songs underlines how much material they produced. Rather than holding the tracks for a later album, McCartney is folding them into the same body of work, with the flip mix of 'Home to Us' offering a fresh angle on a collaboration already familiar to anyone who bought the May edition. Starr's presence on the duet ties the record, however lightly, back to the performing partnership that once sat at the centre of the Beatles.

Vinyl, collage and what comes after

Collectors will wait until December for the double LP. The orange and blue marble pressings, the zoetrope etching and Gibb's collage of personal images give the physical edition a character distinct from the digital release. The special edition's track list appends the four new recordings to the original 14; there is no suggestion of a re-ordered album beyond the alternate take of the Starr duet.

What the October release does for the chart life of The Boys of Dungeon Lane remains to be seen. The Mercury Prize nomination already places the record in a wider conversation about the albums of its year, not only among catalogue campaigns. No further singles, tour dates or session volumes have been announced with this edition. For now the story is the four tracks, the December vinyl, and an album that, months after release, is still gathering new weight.