Here’s something music fans haven’t heard in a few decades: The Beatles are releasing a new song this week.
The track, “Now and Then,” will be released on Thursday, November 2, as part of a single paired with “Love Me Do,” the very first Beatles single that came out in England in 1962 — 61 years ago.
Marketed as the last Beatles song, “Now and Then” is written and sung by John Lennon and worked on by Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, with a little help from our AI friends.
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“Now And Then” comes from the same batch of unreleased demos written by the late John Lennon, which were taken by his former bandmates to construct the songs “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love,” released in the mid-1990s.
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AI technology helped to separate the voices of Lennon and Harrison in the unreleased track, giving McCartney and Starr much clearer vocals to help add onto.
The tech is similar to what direction Peter Jackson used for Disney+’s mini-series Get Back, released in 2021.
The new single contains a guitar that Harrison had originally recorded nearly three decades ago, along with a new drum part by Starr, and McCartney on the bass. The only two living Beatles will also sing backup.
A modern trio of AI, McCartney, and Starr will also weave in vocals from the original Beatles recordings of “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and “Because.”
“There it was, John’s voice, crystal clear,” McCartney said in the announcement. “It’s quite emotional. And we all play on it; it’s a genuine Beatles recording. In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music and about to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s quite an exciting thing.”
A 12-minute documentary film will debut on November 1 on The Beatles’ YouTube channel at 12:30 pm PT (3:30 pm ET) and will tell the story behind the last Beatles song, with exclusive footage and commentary from McCartney, Starr, Harrison, Sean Ono Lennon, and Peter Jackson.
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