The Beatles are releasing a new song, “Now and Then”, more than 50 years after their breakup. Find out here how the song came about despite the deceased members.
- The Beatles released a new song “Now and Then”.
- The recordings of the late John Lennon were taken from demo tapes he had worked on in 1980.
- AI technology made it possible to restore the recordings.
Until his death in December 1980, John Lennon worked on some demo recordings, which his wife Yoko Ono passed on to the other members of the Beatles after his death. This resulted in the songs “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” in 1995. In the 12-minute documentary “The Beatles – Now And Then – The Last Beatles Song”, which you can watch on the band’s official YouTube channel, it has now been revealed that a third song was still being worked on at the time.
However, in the mid-nineties, technology was not yet at the same level as it is today, meaning that high-quality recordings were not possible. The problem at the time was separating John Lennon’s vocals from the sound of the piano, Paul McCartney explains in the documentary. The band therefore decided not to release the song at the time.
AI separates John Lennon’s voice from the piano
After two decades, the technology has now developed significantly. AI technology, which was already used in the three-part documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back” by Peter Jackson in 2021, has now made it possible to separate John Lennon’s voice from the piano on the demo tape “Now and Then”. This means that it is John Lennon’s original voice and has not been artificially reproduced.
You can listen to the finished song on Apple Music, YouTube or Spotify. Real Beatles fans can of course also buy it on Amazon.