Paul McCartney Joked That Paul Mescal Knew His Own Guitar Part Better Than He Did

Imagine being Paul McCartney and having to concede that a 29-year-old Irish actor plays your own song better than you do. Now imagine finding it absolutely brilliant.

That's exactly what happened when Sir Paul sat down with Paul Mescal ahead of his remarkable 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane — and the story is already the most charming thing you'll hear this week.

McCartney revealed that when he and the Oscar-nominated Normal People star picked up guitars together, Mescal came prepared. Seriously prepared.

The former Beatle said it with a laugh, clearly tickled rather than threatened. It's the kind of moment that reminds you why McCartney, at 83, remains utterly magnetic company.

The new album is something genuinely special — 14 tracks spanning almost as many musical styles, all rooted in McCartney's childhood on the streets of post-war Liverpool. He calls them "memory songs."

"I like to go over memories, because it brings me back to the time," he explains, and you can hear exactly that warmth threaded through every track.

Growing up in the 1940s, McCartney watched a bomb-scarred city rebuild itself around music, jokes, and sheer resilience. His father Jim — a self-taught pianist who loved crosswords — quietly shaped the songwriter his son would become.

Meet Sir Paul today and you'll find a grandfather beaming over a phone case covered in holiday snaps of his eight grandchildren. He reels off their universities — Yale, Brown, NYU — with the barely-contained pride of any proud grandad on a park bench.

It's a reminder that McCartney has always been the sentimental Beatle. The one who wrote love songs about love songs, who kept John, George, and Ringo close in his memory long after the world stopped expecting him to.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane feels like the album only he could make — and proof that at 83, Paul McCartney still has something new to say.