Have you heard? The Beatles got back together. Yes, you read that right. The Beatles—the band that defined a generation and then some. When someone asked me last week if I’d heard the news, I assumed they were making some kind of weird joke. The reason I assumed they were joking, in case you missed it, is because two of the Beatles have been dead for decades (rest in peace, John and George.) But to my surprise, they were right: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were back at it again in 2023.
On Nov. 2, 2023, the Beatles released “Now and Then,” their first new song in decades. The psychedelic soft rock ballad is a haunting echo from the past, originally written and demoed to tape by John Lennon in the late 1970s. As Paul McCartney explained in a twelve-minute documentary released on the Beatles’ YouTube channel, he, Ringo Starr and George Harrison attempted to finish Lennon’s demo in 1994, almost 15 years after his death. However, insurmountable technical difficulties, particularly the inability to isolate Lennon’s vocals from the prominent piano instrumental, made their efforts impossible.
McCartney’s storytelling of the song’s evolution piqued my curiosity, and one question rose to the top: if the remaining Beatles couldn’t finish the song, what changed between 1994 and now? Paul must have read my mind.
“With the technology that Peter Jackson and his team had worked out during the “Get Back” movie, he’d been able to separate off certain instruments and voices…” McCartney said.
He was tipping his cap to the industry-defining, AI-driven audio process developed by Park Road Post Production in New Zealand.
“So in the mix, we could lift John’s voice without lifting the piano, which had always been one of the problems,” he said.
I was hooked, but not because I was touched by the story or even the amazing technology. For some reason I can’t quite pinpoint, I’m the biggest sucker for posthumous musical releases, whether it’s the onslaught of Elvis collabs brought on by Linda Ronstadt, Mac Miller’s album “Circles” or even Johnny Cash’s box set (appropriately titled “Unearthed.”) Something about hearing what people have to say after they can’t actually say it anymore fascinates me. Perhaps it’s the added poignancy, the knowledge that these could be the last words we’ll ever hear from these artists, that lends their voices such power. Maybe it’s the sense of closure, the chance to hear what they might have said had they lived longer. Or maybe it’s just morbid curiosity. I haven’t sat with it long enough to tell you for certain.
Regardless, I eagerly took a listen to the song, and wouldn’t you know it, Lennon’s voice was crystal clear, without a hint of that amateur 1970s tape recorder sound. The piano was pulled down in the mix, and it might as well have been recorded at Abbey Road Studios. This AI stuff is really something, huh? Lyrically, the song is in line with Lennon’s other late 70s songs—melancholy and wistful. “Now and then, I miss you,” Lennon sings, backed by an older McCartney. “Now and then, I want you to be there with me.”
Paul and Ringo have arranged the demo like a Beatles song, adding bass and drums, and even bringing in the son of legendary Beatles composer George Martin to arrange orchestral elements. George Harrison’s guitar recorded in 1994 cements this as a genuine Beatles collaboration. Even though few would argue this is the best Beatles song by a long shot, to me it feels like a fitting reunion and closure to the band’s decades-spanning catalog.
Still, something started gnawing at me as I listened to this song in particular. It hasn’t happened before, not with Elvis, not with Johnny Cash and not with Mac. I started to wonder if it was even ethical for one of the most famous bands in the world to use a tape of their deceased bandmate as a template for a new single. How could anyone ever be sure that, as Paul put it, “John would have loved that!” My mind tried to satisfy the question. After all, these people have estates and families who likely knew these people better than anyone else in the world. Surely someone like Yoko Ono could speak to what Lennon would say, and she was the one who provided the Beatles with the original tape!
But I’m reminded of Juice WRLD’s posthumous catalog. If you’re not familiar, Juice WRLD was a prominent hip-hop artist who died in 2019 due to an accidental overdose. Since his death, his label, with the permission of his family, has been churning his unreleased songs out. The label claims they have over 3,000 songs left that they could make using his vocals and have begun offering them to artists who wish for Juice WRLD to feature on their songs posthumously. When you hear some of these songs, you realize half of Juice WRLD’s verses have nothing to do with the song they’re shoved into and half of them were never even meant to see the light of day, as they could never possibly meet the deceased artist’s standards. This idea of collaboration without permission got me thinking in a new light about “Now and Then.” At the end of the day, if you’re six feet under, even if you’re as loud as John Lennon, it’s hard to hear you give permission to use your voice for commercial purposes.
Still, I think there is a difference between blatant exploitation and a good-faith attempt at an encore. The surviving Beatles appear to care a great deal about their deceased bandmates and show attention to detail in faithfully reimagining their unique sound. McCartney even made space in the song for a slide guitar solo in Harrison’s style as a tribute to him. Either way, the song is a moral tightrope that every listener must balance in their own way. Certainly, the very use of AI technology may muddy the waters for some listeners, but to my way of thinking, it’s not as though a lifeless voice clone or songwriting generator was used, as is becoming more common. The technology was simply leveraged in a mixing context to bring presence to Lennon’s voice. Honestly, that’s extremely cool.
I’ll continue to listen to “Now and Then,” because, in addition to being a poignant closer for a band whose rocky history dominated the cultural zeitgeist of the last 20th century, it’s a technological marvel that will no doubt go down in history as one of the first use cases of technology like this. After all, art is still art even when someone is profiting from it. Art does not have to be cheapened by the knowledge that a studio exec is salivating over its release. But the release of this song makes an exchange between the Beatles in 1994 much more striking:
Harrison: “You know this computer stuff? It opens up a whole other kettle of fish.”
McCartney: “Can of worms?”
Starr: “But will it open another year of work?”
For John Lennon, I suppose it will.
“Now and Then” is streaming on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.