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The year is 2023, John Lennon has been deceased for nearly 43 years, but The Beatles just released a new song thanks to the aid of artificial intelligence.
The Beatles’ new song ‘Now And Then’ came from a demo tape labeled ‘For Paul’ that was given to Paul McCartney by Yoko Ono in 1995. At the time, Sir Paul McCartney called the recording’s sound quality of Lennon’s vocals “rubbish” and the recording was deemed unfit to turn into a song. Flash forward to today and The Beatles were able to release their last-ever ‘new song’ thanks to using artificial intelligence to finish Lennon’s vocals.
The official YouTube Channel for The Beatles just shared their new music video for ‘Now And Then’ and the video was directed by none other than Peter Jackson who directed their Get Back documentary.
Paul, George, and Ringo first worked on the lost ‘For Paul’ demo tape in 1995. But a software system that was built out by Peter Jackson and his team in 2022 enabled the living members of The Beatles to forge past their previous technological challenges.
The technology created by Peter Jackson for Get Back enabled Paul to decouple John Lennon‘s piano from his voice which was the impediment to completing the project.
By its very nature, this is the last-ever recording from the four members of The Beatles and it’s the last new music from The Beatles there ever will be. That might be bittersweet but we’ll take what we can get from them.