LThe news is already causing discussion. And quite a lot. A new Beatles song is coming out, in which – thanks to artificial intelligence – we will be able to listen John Lennon’s voice«extracted» from an old demo e handled to best complete the piece. As if it had been recorded in recent weeks.
Now and Thenwritten by John Lennon in 1978
The artistic story of The Beatles is immense. Through their songs, i Fab Four – as the press defined them – they represented an era. And now, more than fifty years after their dissolution (occurred on April 10, 1970), their discography is ready to be enriched by a new piece.
Paul McCartney communicated it in an interview with the program Today Of BBC Radio 4. The singer-songwriter, in fact, said that artificial intelligence was used to contribute to the publication of what he himself defined «the last record of the Beatles». The title of the song in question is not yet official, but most likely it is Now and then.
The Beatles on 2 July 1964 at London airport, returning from a tour of Australia. Credit: Fox Photos/Getty Images
A new Beatles song in 2023. Paul McCartney’s word
But how will this “return” of the Beatles in the sales and streaming charts happen? It’s very simple. Thanks to the technology of machine learning it was possible to extract Lennon’s vocals from an old demo and reproduce them.
And so His voicecarefully remodeled and brought back to a better quality standard, will appear in this track. As if Lennon was still with us. As if his voice were still here, keeping us company, with new notes and interpretations.
In the interview with BBC Radio 4McCartney said. “We just finished it and it will be out this year”. Apparently, Now and then was already being considered as a possible 1995 Beatles reunion song. Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had then released the singles Free as a Bird And real lovecontained in the project Anthology.
According to what was leaked, Now and then is one of the songs contained in the cassette labeled “For Paul” on which John Lennon had worked shortly before his terrible murderwhich took place on the evening of December 8, 1980 in New York.
“Needs to be reworked”
The traces of Anthology had been recorded on a portable tape recorder by Lennon, while he was at the piano in his apartment in the Dakota Building. It was the producer Jeff Lynne who remastered them and allowed to have the two unpublished ones for the first two chapters of the series Anthology. In the last one, however, there was no unpublished work. And it seems that it had to be right Now and Then.
The reason for the absence of that new version in the project (containing, in addition to three double CDs, also a documentary and a book)? Jeff Lynne himself had explained it. «The song had a chorus but almost entirely lacked verses. We did the backing track, a rough job that we didn’t finish.”
Paul McCartney, however, has pointed out. «It didn’t have a good title, it needed to be reworked. But it had a beautiful verse sung by John. George didn’t like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn’t make it». Apparently, then, in the original recording there was a strong annoying buzz. However, a version of the song was released in 2009, without this noise.
But now Paul McCartney would have every intention of completing this passage once and for all, exploiting the potential of artificial intelligence. All to give the Beatles’ faithful audience a surprise that has all the potential to amaze and excite us.
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