The Beatles have, at last, unveiled their final song, “Now and Then.” The track is centered on a John Lennon vocal that was unearthed in 1994. Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr worked on the track together surrounding the creation of “Real Love” and “Free as a Bird” in 1995. The track was originally shelved due to the poor audio quality, but revived when AI helped better enhance Lennon’s performance. Listen to the Beatles’ “Now and Then” below.
“When we started ‘Now and Then,’ it was very difficult because John was sort of hidden in a way,” Starr said in a short film accompanying the song’s official release. McCartney explained that the recording of Lennon’s piano was muffling his vocals, and, in 1995, the trio decided to walk away after finishing two of the three songs. The sessions “languished in a cupboard,” McCartney claimed until last year.
McCartney and Starr decided to revisit the song after Peter Jackson and his team had introduced McCartney to technology that allowed them to isolate and enhance audio behind the footage that made up Get Back. “My dad would’ve loved that, because he was never shy to experiment with recording technology,” Sean Ono Lennon said in the short film. “He would’ve loved that.” The team isolated Lennon’s vocal, which prompted McCartney and Starr to pick up work on the song, reintegrating Harrison’s work from 1995.
A music video for the song will arrive tomorrow, November 3, at 10 a.m. Eastern. It was directed by Peter Jackson.
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