Paul McCartney and John Lennon, 1964.
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A brand new song by The Beatles is set to be released in 2023. According to his own statement, Paul McCartney has himself in one British radio show served on old vocals by John Lennon, which he extracted from an old demo using artificial intelligence. “We got him [den Song] just finished and it will come out this year,” said the 80-year-old. McCartney didn’t specify which Beatles song would be released, but rumors have it that it will be “Now and Then”. An exact release date has not yet been set.
The “new” song is actually from 1978
“Now and Then” was included on a John Lennon demo tape given to Paul McCartney by Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow. The songs “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, released as part of the “Anthology” project in 1995, were also on this tape.
Now “Now and Then” is apparently supposed to appear after all. Because George Martin resisted producing the song throughout his life, McCartney hired Jeff Lynne, who had helmed “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” for the job.
Paul McCartney has worked with artificial intelligence before. For Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back” (2021), McCartney said on the radio show, the production team gave an AI recordings of John Lennon playing the piano and singing. The result was a cleaned up vocal track. McCartney himself admitted to finding AI “kinda creepy”. But: “It’s the future. We’ll have to see where that takes us.”