The Beatles just released a new song and it’s their last collaborative effort. With the help of AI, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr gave new life to an old John Lennon demo. How did they achieve this?
Well, it all comes back to the first Lennon’s “Now and Then” demo, when McCartney, Harrison and Star reunited back on the song in the mid-‘90s. This song would be part of their “Anthology” album along with “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”.
Still, The Beatles couldn’t advance on “Now and Then” because they were unable to separate Lennon’s piano in a different track. But everything changed when Peter Jackson started working on the “Get Back” documentary for Disney Plus, when his team developed a technology that allowed them to separate pieces of a demo and “split all the different components into separate tracks based on machine learning.”
This was a whole new opportunity for McCartney and Starr, who couldn’t work on the track after Harrison died in 2001.
McCartney recorded a bass track, Starr recorded drums and they left some parts of Harrison recordings in the previous session. And so, the new Beatles song came to life, with cooperation of all 4 members and an AI.
The Guardian gave the song 4 stars out of 5 in their review, writing “Now and Then is a qualified success.”Peter Jackson also directed a video for the song that is available on YouTube. The song is available on all streaming services.
