More than 50 years after the Beatles split up, what is probably their last single has been released. “Now and Then” was produced using artificial intelligence. Ex-Beatle McCartney sounds like he’s saying goodbye in a video.
The four Beatles came together again for “Now and Then” – the Beatles’ new song. “It’s overwhelming,” says music journalist and Beatles expert Phil Alexander, who works for Mojo magazine. The recording sounds as if John Lennon was in the room.
John Lennon wrote the song in the 1970s and finally recorded it on a cassette recorder in 1979, in poor quality. The tape couldn’t be used all these years. Filters couldn’t free John Lennon’s voice from drowning noise. Eventually, sound engineers were able to save the recording with the help of artificial intelligence.
Restoration of an audio track
Giles Martin is the son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin. He produced the song and explained how John’s voice was revealed:
In summary, it works like this: You take enough data and feed it to a computer, which then learns what John’s voice sounds like. And then you are able to remove all the overlapping tones. It’s like archaeology.
So no new song was written here, no computer was programmed to sound like John Lennon – but an audio track was restored.
Sounds like a classic Beatles song
The guitarist George Harrison had already recorded a track before his death, and now Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney came into the studio to record. Sounds like a classic Beatles song, says Phil Alexander: “It’s the kind of song that gets stuck in your head if you’ve heard the title more than once.”
The title was published online, but it is also available on classic recordings. A single release along with the debut single “Love Me Do”. The first and the last song – somehow everything looks like it. And Paul McCartney also sounds like he’s saying goodbye in a published video: “How lucky I was to have these men in my life.”