The Last Beatles Song: What It Means for Music and AI
Graphic by Kaci Kopf
The revolutionary English rock band The Beatles released their final song last week after using AI technology to complete the 45-year-old song written by deceased band member John Lennon.
The psychedelic soft rock ballad “Now and Then,” dubbed as “the last Beatles song,” debuted at number one on the Billboard Digital Song Sales this week. The song was first written and recorded in 1977 by John Lennon but ultimately left unfinished and unreleased until now.
The legendary band, whose music has been passed down from generation to generation, put their musical stamp on another era of listeners. The melancholic song creates a wistful feeling, bringing new and old fans to a place of nostalgia and joy.
In 1994, “Now and Then,” in addition to several other songs written by Lennon, was given to his former band member Sir Paul McCartney by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono. The three then-surviving Beatles, McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, reunited in 1995 to finish what Lennon had started.
After a one-afternoon session messing around with the incomplete song, adding backing tracks and a rough go-through, the song was shelved due to technical issues, a lack of verses and “being rubbish” according to Harrison. This year, McCartney returned to the project using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist in extracting Lennon’s voice from the original demo and since passed Harrison’s guitar parts.
Before the song's release, McCartney tweeted a clarification for the upcoming project. “To be clear, nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It’s all real and we all play on it,” McCartney said. “We cleaned up some exciting recordings - a process which has gone on for years.”
To produce the final version of “Now and Then,” production company WingNut films isolated instruments, vocals and conversations utilizing its audio restoration technology. They then strung together: Lennon’s vocals, McCartney’s new string arrangement, Harrison’s guitar parts from the 1995 session and Starr’s re-recorded drums using MAL (machine-assisted learning).
The song's release was paired with a music video that featured never-before-seen clips of the Beatles, scenes filmed during the 1995 recording sessions for Anthology, unseen home movie footage of Harrison and new footage of McCartney and Starr performing the new song. Each of these aspects was combined to create a video filled with a sentimental nature.
So, going forward, what does this mean for musicians, dead and alive?
The ability to use AI to isolate vocals and instrumental arrangements from the outdated technologies of the past is a tool that will most likely be used in the future when creating songs. Artists, new and old, can now take inspiration from music that was once inaccessible to modern-day recording software. Will this lead to more songs from deceased musicians? We will just have to wait and see.
One thing is acknowledged at this point: AI cannot fully create music that authentically and emotionally connects with listeners. It can, however, help musicians streamline the creative process when coming up with new concepts for their art, or in the case of the Beatles, mesh the music of the past with the music of the present.
Yet, in my opinion, human musicians will always be more coveted than artificially created music.
