27 years later, the Beatles release new music again.
Very early, “Now and Then” has just been made available and marks a triumphant return for the most famous quartet in history, with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison It is Ringo Starr participating in the music.
The song is the first to add to the Fab Four’s catalog after “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” were released respectively in 1995 and 1996 from demos left by John Lennon. “Now and Then” has the same origin and officially becomes the Beatles’ last song.
The song has a nostalgic atmosphere, as well as a ballad atmosphere, with John Lennon leading the vocals and being accompanied by his bandmates, who have worked on his parts recently.
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr revisited the track in 2022 after the director Peter Jackson use technologies used in the documentary Get Back to isolate Lennon’s voice and make it crystal clear.
The band had already worked on parts of the song with George Harrison in 1995, six years before he left us, but they were not happy with the final result at the time.
You can listen to “Now And Then” below. At the end of the article, you can watch a documentary that features testimonials from Paul McCartney, Peter Jackson and more about the entire recording process.
Continues after video
New Beatles song made with AI?
One of the biggest questions fans have is whether Artificial Intelligence was used in the creation of the Beatles’ new music, and the answer is more complex than it seems.
When announcing the new song, Paul McCartney pointed out that it was only possible to rescue it thanks to AI technology, which allowed the group to complete Lennon’s demos and the guitar recordings left by George Harrison, all taken from the original mid-1990s sessions. 90s with the producer Jeff Lynne.
The resource, then, was used only to isolate and improve Lennon’s vocals — that is, it is the same mixing technique used by Lennon. Peter Jackson in the 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Backand not a recreation of John’s voice with technology.
So, it’s not as if the vocals in the Beatles’ new song were created by machines. Advanced technology was only used to perfectly isolate an analog recording left by Lennon that had noise and other elements.
What Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr said about the new song
In an interview with Radio Times, Ringo Starr commented that “Now and Then” is “the closest we will get” to having the late John Lennon back. In an emotional tone, the drummer also spoke about the process of recording the song, as we told you in this article.
Paul McCartney, speaking about the issue of using AI, stated:
We had John’s voice and a piano and [pudemos] separate them thanks to AI. They tell the machine, ‘This is the voice. This is the guitar. Remove the guitar’. So when we came to do what would be the Beatles’ last recording, it was a demo that John had [e] we were able to take John’s voice and purify it through this AI. Then we can mix the recording, as you normally do. So it kind of gives you a space to work.
He ended by saying that “it’s all real” and assured that “we all touched it”, and you can see the result of all this at the end of the article!
Documentary and video for “Now and Then”
It’s worth remembering that yesterday (1) the Beatles also released a short documentary about making of from “Now and Then”, called Now and Then – The Last Beatles Song. You can watch it in full right after the player with the new music!
In time, tomorrow (3) fans will be presented with a clip of the new song, made by none other than Peter Jackson.
