Comment: The Beatles Now and Then Published on: 3 November 2023 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Adam Behr discusses the 'last' Beatles song Now and Then which was made using AI. , In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music … to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing. Not surprisingly, about the appearance this week of what has been trailed as the “last” Beatles song, Now and Then. Much has been made of . Machine learning was used to , and then isolate it from other sounds – a piano, a television in the background, electrical hum – to make it usable in a new recording. It also comes amid a slew of Beatles-related activity recently – a , Peter Jackson’s epic 2021 documentary , new versions of the famed compilation albums, and a Paul McCartney tour, during which he is playing some of the Fab Four’s back catalogue. The commercial juggernaut seems unstoppable, so it’s perhaps easy to be cynical about a “new” song from a band that broke up in 1970, two of whose members are dead. Certainly, Now and Then does raise questions about how technologically mediated releases relate to collective artistic output, and what it means to be a band. Collective creativity in bands In many ways, though, the AI label is a red herring, and this new song – which actually has its roots in a John Lennon demo tape from 1977 – demonstrates a continuing pattern. The Beatles and their narrative provided a seminal example of how bands work, and seemed to be ploughing the furrow for others. From their original formation as schoolboys (Ringo joined in 1962 when they started recording), to their enormous financial success and cultural impact, the Beatles laid down templates that others have followed. at a church fete in 1957 is now the stuff of legend. Their , assisted by producer , helped to make recordings – especially albums – a central feature of the popular music experience. They emerged into professional practice together, splitting as they formed new relationships and moved onto the next phases of their life while still relatively young men. Bands are simultaneously social groupings, creative units and economic entities. The economic “brand” can obviously run on for many years after the others have stopped. There is also long history of posthumous releases, including , and , even Otis Redding’s defining hit . Demo recordings, unheard live performances and radio broadcasts are all established parts of artists’ catalogues. This becomes complicated, though, when the act in question is a collective with deceased members whose presence on the recording is technologically facilitated. A key example is the Beatles 1995 project, which saw the surviving members revisit John Lennon demos from a cassette given to McCartney by Yoko Ono, and add new parts to finish the songs. This wasn’t entirely unique. Queen’s , in the same year, saw the band finish songs that Freddie Mercury worked on in the studio before he died. But it did involve resurrecting fragments of home recordings to clean them up for the commercial market. The technology wasn’t sufficient at the time to properly isolate Lennon’s voice on Now and Then, so it was abandoned until Peter Jackson used machine learning to remove noise from source recordings for Get Back. By this time George Harrison had died, so this technology allowed McCartney and Starr to return to the song, incorporating Harrison’s guitar solo from the aborted 1990s attempt. Come together We can, then, consider the process behind this latest song in evolutionary rather than revolutionary terms. The possibilities of multi-track recording since the 1950s mean it’s long been the case that musicians have worked separately on the same song. As : There was a lot more individual stuff … people were accepting that it was individual. I remember having three studios operating at the same time. Paul was doing some overdubs in one, John was in another and I was recording some horns or something in a third. Even when the Beatles were together, many canonical songs were the work of only one or two of them. McCartney wrote and alone, and is the only Beatle who plays on them. didn’t feature Harrison or Starr. And the former band members played on each other’s “solo” records too. There are more Beatles on Harrison’s , or Lennon’s than on some of the band’s tracks. They all played separately on Starr’s 1973 album Ringo. So Now and Then continues longstanding practices, going back to their heyday. Its status as the final Beatles song, though, reveals technological limitations. AI can create convincing facsimiles, but can’t replicate the facts of who actually played or sang the various parts, which is a central plank of what constitutes a band. Audiences to music in many ways, and core among these for bands is the line-up – some acts within the brand, others have had . It’s often a source of debate, at least, with “” line-ups being those that earn the audience stamp of authenticity. So what of the song itself? It won’t supplant the likes of Hey Jude or Help in The Beatles’ musical pantheon. That bar, though, is high and the plangent piano-led ballad has a familiar yet distinctive arrangement, steeped in nostalagia but affecting on its own terms nevertheless. Lennon’s voice is clearer than on previous reconstructions and the harmonies sound like, well … The Beatles. In that sense, what’s at the heart of this project is the presence – even spectrally – of the actual four people who made up the creative and social underpinning for the brand. The “last” Beatles song sees them demonstrating the importance, even as a coda to their recording career, of the interpersonal connections that set things in motion in the first place. Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. . , Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . Share: Latest News Scientists unlock hidden driver of inflammatory bowel disease Scientists have linked a key genetic signal in inflammatory bowel disease to an immune response that shuts down inflammation control, enabling faster diagnosis and targeted treatments. published on: 15 June 2026 Funding system risks limiting genuine community collaboration A new policy paper written by researchers at Â鶹´«Ă˝ warns that the way UK research is funded may be undermining efforts to create genuinely collaborative partnerships with communities. published on: 15 June 2026 Volunteers help turn Whitley Bay beach into maths experiment Members of the public joined mathematicians from Â鶹´«Ă˝ to create what organisers believe is the largest aperiodic tiling ever attempted on Whitley Bay beach. published on: 15 June 2026 Facts and figures
![Â鶹´«Ă˝ logo](/gomobileassets/img/logo.svg" "Â鶹´«Ă˝"){kind=logo}