Paul McCartney defended the song “Momma Gets By”: “It is not a story about my parents”
Paul McCartney has defended the lyrics of “Momma Gets By”, the closing track from the new album “The Boys of Dungeon Lane”, after part of the attention was drawn by its portrayal of a family in which the mother carries the greatest burden of everyday life. According to a report by NME, McCartney emphasized that the song is not an autobiographical story about his parents, but an imagined portrait of a woman who, despite exhausting circumstances and an irresponsible partner, manages to keep the family together. In the same explanation, he said that he wanted to portray the resilience, love and strength of a woman who fights for those closest to her. “There are a lot of strong women”, McCartney said, presenting the song as a dedication to such people, not as a family confession.
The song closes an album that, according to the official notes published on McCartney’s website, was conceived as a distinctly introspective release focused on memories, early years in Liverpool and personal motifs from the period before the global fame of The Beatles. “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” was released at the end of May 2026 as McCartney’s first new solo studio album in more than five years. The official discography lists 14 songs, and “Momma Gets By” appears in the final place on the track list, after the songs “Days We Left Behind”, “Home to Us”, “Salesman Saint” and other tracks that combine memories, family motifs and love themes.
Imagined characters, not a family biography
According to available reports from the album presentation, McCartney repeatedly stressed that “Momma Gets By” should not be read as direct testimony about his home or his parents’ marriage. In explanations carried by The Paul McCartney Project, he referred to a method he also used in older songs such as “Lady Madonna”: the starting point is not necessarily a real person, but a character the author invents, observes and develops through the song. In the case of “Momma Gets By”, that character is a mother who takes responsibility for the family, while the father is portrayed as weaker, more passive and inclined to flee from obligations. McCartney emphasized that these are “two characters in a play”, that is, a small dramatic situation shaped in a song, not a portrait of specific people from his life.
Such clarification is also important because of the album’s broader context. “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” strongly relies on McCartney’s memories of Liverpool, childhood in post-war Britain and early relationships with John Lennon and George Harrison, so part of the audience naturally wonders which songs are autobiographical and which belong to the realm of fiction. The official description of the album speaks of rare and personal insights into the past, but that does not mean every song is a literal reconstruction of events. “Momma Gets By”, therefore, according to McCartney’s explanation, sits on the boundary between familiar emotional ground and an invented story: life situations that many understand can be recognized in it, but the author does not claim to be describing his own family history.
According to reports from the album listening session in Los Angeles, the song is written from the perspective of a child observing adult relationships. That choice of perspective further strengthens the impression that this is a short story in musical form. The child sees the mother’s effort, the father’s weakness and a family dynamic that cannot be fully controlled, but can be felt. McCartney explained that, as a writer, he is interested precisely in that space between the real, the possible and the imagined: what was, what is and what could be. In this way, the song joins a long line of his works in which everyday scenes become small character studies.
The mother as the centre of the song
The central figure of the song is the mother, a person who earns money, takes care of the home and the child, and keeps going even when circumstances are unfair. In the available lyrics of the song, published alongside the official audio recording and on music platforms, the opening line “Momma gets by, while papa gets high” summarizes the basic conflict, but McCartney’s explanation shows that the song was not conceived as a simple condemnation or caricature. According to him, the mother is not a passive victim, but a person with her own life philosophy, a strong sense of responsibility and the ability to withstand what would break many others. It was precisely this aspect, not the sensational portrayal of the father, that the author placed in the foreground when speaking about the meaning of the composition.
McCartney’s formulation about strong women gives the song a broader social frame. It can be read as a dedication to people who perform a large part of family and emotional labour, often without recognition and without dramatic gestures. In such a reading, “Momma Gets By” does not speak only about one imagined family, but about a pattern that appears in different societies and generations: one person, most often a woman, takes on the burden of stability while another remains inconsistent or absent. McCartney does not offer a political manifesto here, but a narrative song in which the emotional weight is built through character, the child’s voice and the gradual expansion of the arrangement.
It is also important that McCartney does not claim the mother’s resilience should be romanticized. His explanation points more to recognizing strength than to beautifying an unequal relationship. The song portrays a woman who “gets by”, but precisely because of that it opens questions about how often someone’s invisible work is taken for granted within a family. That is why the author’s reaction to interpretations of the lyrics is crucial: he does not defend the father figure, nor does he claim that the situation is ideal, but explains why he shifted the focus to the mother and her ability to continue caring for others. This is where the emotional axis of the song lies, and the reason he calls it a dedication to strong women.
An album turned toward Liverpool, childhood and memory
“The Boys of Dungeon Lane” is a broader project than one song. According to the official announcement, the album returns McCartney to his formative years and the space of Liverpool, especially the Speke area, where he spent his early childhood. The Guardian reported in March 2026 that the album title points to a route toward the Speke shore and to a landscape connected with McCartney’s upbringing. In the official statement about the song “Days We Left Behind”, the album’s title reference, McCartney spoke about memories of Liverpool, Forthlin Road and John Lennon. This material confirms that the album was shaped as a return to the beginning, but not only in a nostalgic sense; it is also an attempt to turn personal history into contemporary songs.
The official album notes describe the release as a collection of new songs in which early memories, family motifs and newly written love songs intertwine. Within that framework, “Momma Gets By” has a special role because it is placed at the very end of the album. The closing position often carries additional weight: it can round off a thematic whole, provide an emotional echo or open a new question after the previous songs deal with more direct memories. If certain parts of the album are focused on McCartney’s own path, the final song broadens the view toward an imagined family and a more universal portrait of a person who carries everyday life. In this way, the personal and the fictional meet in the closing scene.
The album’s producer is Andrew Watt, a musician and producer who in recent years has worked with a number of major rock performers. According to official information, McCartney and Watt began developing the material after meeting in 2021, and the recording sessions took place between McCartney’s touring commitments, in Los Angeles and Sussex. The official announcement states that McCartney played most of the instruments on part of the material, in the spirit of his earlier solo albums on which he often shaped the musical foundation himself. That detail further explains why the release is presented as personal: it is an album that rests not only on themes of memory, but also on authorial control over sound and performance.
An old songwriting technique in a new context
McCartney’s explanation of “Momma Gets By” fits into his long-standing inclination to write songs about invented characters. Even during The Beatles era, he often created short portraits of people who did not necessarily exist as real individuals, but sounded convincing because they were built from recognizable details of everyday life. In more recent statements about the album, he recalled that George Harrison used to say he was good at inventing characters. That method is visible in this song as well: the mother, father and child are not presented through an extensive biography, but through several precise relationships, habits and emotional tensions. From these fragments emerges a story the listener can complete with their own experience.
This kind of writing differs from the confessional model in which the author speaks directly about himself. Here McCartney uses personal knowledge about families, work, love and disappointment, but transfers it into an invented scene. That is why his defence of the song is also a defence of the author’s right to write beyond his own biography. When he says the song is not about his parents, he does not deny that there is emotional truth in it. Instead, he distinguishes factual truth from artistic persuasiveness. According to such a reading, a song does not have to be a document in order to speak about real feelings and relationships.
This approach may also explain why “Momma Gets By” provoked additional discussion. Because the album was presented as distinctly personal, every song is automatically viewed through the prism of McCartney’s biography. But the author’s clarification shows that a personal album can also contain invented stories, especially if they rely on themes that matter to the author. The strength of mothers, family responsibility, devotion and everyday resilience can be personal themes even when the characters are not copies of real people. It is precisely in that tension between memory and fiction that part of the interest in the new release lies.
The album’s chart success
The discussion about the closing song is taking place at a moment when “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” is enjoying a strong commercial response. According to data from the Official Charts Company, the album debuted at number one on the official UK albums chart on 5 June 2026. The same source states that this is McCartney’s sixth solo album to top that chart and his 24th number one overall in his career, counting work with different projects across seven decades. That result further confirms his exceptional position in British popular music, but also the audience’s interest in a new authorial chapter by the 83-year-old songwriter.
Billboard, meanwhile, reported that “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States and at number one on three of Billboard’s album charts. Such a result shows that the album does not function only as a nostalgic event tied to the legacy of The Beatles, but also as a current release competing in the contemporary recording environment. Chart success is also important for understanding the media attention around individual songs. When an album reaches a wide audience, a closing track such as “Momma Gets By” ceases to be merely a detail for the most devoted listeners and becomes a subject of broader interpretation.
In that context, McCartney’s defence of the lyrics can also be read as an attempt to steer the discussion. Instead of reducing the song to the question of whether it is a concealed family confession, the author emphasized its narrative and dedicatory dimension. In doing so, he offered the public a key for reading the composition: the mother in the song is not his mother, but she belongs to a line of strong female characters he considers worthy of artistic attention. For a performer whose every new song is inevitably measured against decades of his own history, such clarification also has broader meaning. It reminds us that the late work of major authors can be a space of fiction, observation and new characters, not only a summing up of the past.
Why “Momma Gets By” attracted attention
The attention surrounding the song stems from several layers. The first is the theme itself: a family in which one person carries most of the burden is always recognizable and potentially sensitive. The second is McCartney’s status as an author whose biography has been studied for decades, so every song with family motifs gains additional weight. The third is the song’s position on an album that had already been announced as a return to the earliest years and as a release connected with parents, childhood, friendships and places that preceded The Beatles. For all these reasons, it is not unusual that the closing track opened the question of the boundary between autobiography and an invented story.
McCartney’s clarification does not diminish the emotional power of the song, but places it more precisely. He does not claim that it is a neutral exercise in character writing, but a song that uses an invented story to recognize a real kind of strength. The mother in the song is not a symbol without personality; she is a person who works, cares, loves and keeps going. The father is not developed as an equal emotional centre, but as a problematic circumstance the mother has to deal with. The child, as the narrative perspective, makes it possible to present that dynamic simply, but not superficially. Precisely for that reason, the song can be both a narrative miniature and a broader dedication.
For McCartney, who throughout his career has often combined melodic accessibility with precise storytelling, “Momma Gets By” represents the continuation of a familiar authorial line in a new stage of life. The album “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” returns him to the space of childhood and early memories, but the closing song shows that this return is not merely an archival leafing through his own past. In it, the author uses experience, empathy and a long-standing skill for creating characters to shape a scene that can be recognized beyond his biography. That is why his message about strong women remains key to understanding the song: it explains why “Momma Gets By” was written and why McCartney wants to defend it from a narrow, exclusively biographical reading.
Sources:
- NME – report on McCartney’s defence of the lyrics to “Momma Gets By” and his statement about strong women (link)
- PaulMcCartney.com – official announcement and description of the album “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” (link)
- PaulMcCartney.com – official discography of the album and track list (link)
- The Paul McCartney Project – overview of the song “Momma Gets By”, context of statements and available information about the composition (link)
- The Guardian – report on the album announcement, title, Liverpool context and production (link)
- Official Charts Company – data on the album’s UK success and McCartney’s total number of number-one albums (link)
- Billboard – report on the album’s placement on the US charts (link)
- YouTube / Paul McCartney – official audio recording of the song “Momma Gets By” and basic release information (link)