A new Beatles track is surprisingly soulful
“Now and Then” will satisfy old fans and introduce the band to new ones
The long and winding road of the Beatles officially ended in 1970. Rumours swirled of a possible reunion—until December 8th 1980, when John Lennon was assassinated in New York. Since then, the Beatles’ archive has yielded a few posthumous gifts. In 1995 “Free as a Bird”, based on one of Lennon’s last demos, was released; another, “Real Love”, came the next year.
On November 2nd “Now and Then”, touted as the last new Beatles song, hits the airwaves and the internet. Like its 1990s predecessors, it derives from a demo long judged unmixable. Sir Paul McCartney hinted in June that a “kind of scary” AI would help produce a “final Beatles record”, seeding fears of some deep-faked pastiche. In reality far more basic software allowed Lennon’s voice as recorded to sing on this new track, over accompaniment by Sir Paul and Sir Ringo Starr. (Guitar from George Harrison, who died in 2001, is also mixed in.)
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "Come together"
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