The Beatles’ Final Song Is an AI-Assisted Success

Arthur Sullivan, George Gershwin and Carole King composed the music. W. S. Gilbert, Ira Gershwin and Gerry Goffin wrote the lyrics. It’s a clearly defined division of labor common to many of the great musical partnerships. But the most successful collaboration of them all strayed from this familiar pattern. In John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s case, they were two partners who each had the complete package. So, they often wrote independently, with their collaboration flourishing in the small twists they would add to each other’s compositions, elevating them into something much greater.

“[McCartney] provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness,” Lennon explained in one of his final interviews. In practice, this lightness might take the form of a jaunty middle-eight, added by McCartney to enliven one of Lennon’s more melancholy efforts. And Lennon might return the favor by throwing in an acerbic line or two to undercut McCartney’s maudlin tendencies. There was a yin and yang element to their partnership; they were both deeply interconnected and diametrically opposed at the same time. It was a dynamic that mirrored itself in their personal relationship, too. At times, they were the best of friends. But they could also fall into bitter disputes and periods of silence.

In this way, the partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney is not only the most successful songwriting collaboration in music history, it is also one of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest and most tragic love stories. McCartney seems to agree. “I never really said, ‘You know, I love you man’,” he recently reflected. “I never really got round to it.” But this week, McCartney has added a fitting postscript to this musical love story, by transforming an unfinished Lennon demo into the final Beatles song, titled “Now and Then.” The original recording was captured by Lennon at his piano on a home cassette-recorder a year or so before his death. The surviving Beatles attempted to complete the song in the mid-1990s, during the same sessions that yielded “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” but the work on “Now and Then” was quickly abandoned due to the poor audio quality of Lennon’s demo. George Harrison reportedly described it as “fucking rubbish.”

Despite this, McCartney seems to have been unable to let it go. In the years since, he has often dropped hints in interviews of his intention to complete the track. Perhaps the idea of finishing this song means more to McCartney than the other Beatles because of his special relationship with Lennon. The song’s title even carries a personal resonance. According to Beatles mythology, Lennon’s final words to McCartney were: “Think of me every now and then, old friend.” Finally, after all these years, McCartney has been able to finish the song, thanks to recent advances in machine-learning demixing technology. It’s a form of artificial intelligence that can learn to recognize different sounds recorded on a single track and then separate them. In the case of Lennon’s “Now and Then” demo, the technology has been used to isolate his vocal from the piano and eliminate the background noise that caused such difficulties during the 1990s sessions. “There it was, John’s voice, crystal clear,” McCartney said of hearing Lennon’s restored vocal for the first time last year.

A preview of this isolated voice was released earlier this week in a promotional short film from Peter Jackson, and the effect is undeniably powerful. Much brouhaha has been made about the use of artificial intelligence on a Beatles track. But this technology is not inventing anything new. It is acting more like a tool of musical archaeology, carefully chipping away at the rock and brushing the dust aside to extract the undamaged treasure within. For the finished track, McCartney re-recorded Lennon’s piano part to complement the AI-restored vocal. He has also added guitar, bass and electric harpsichord. Ringo Starr has returned to the studio as well, recording backing vocals in addition to a fresh drum part. And Harrison’s guitars from the 1990s sessions have also been included to ensure all four Beatles are on the finished recording.
In addition, Giles Martin, son of long-time Beatles producer George Martin, has taken on production duties (alongside McCartney), to give further authenticity to this restored track as a genuine Beatles recording. He has not only added a string arrangement, but he also mixed in backing vocals from classic recordings, such as “Eleanor Rigby” and “Because,” turning the track into a kind of soundscape of the Beatles across a lifetime. Overall, the finished song contains contributions recorded in the 1960s, ‘70s, ‘90s and 2020s.

With all these myriad elements, the result does feel a little overproduced. The sound is a bit too slick and modern, which is ironic, given the ropiness of the old demo that originated it. But there is also an immense power in hearing the voices of Lennon and McCartney together again. It feels especially fitting that the line on which McCartney’s vocals come through most distinctly is “We will know for sure / That I will love you”—the very words he could never say to Lennon while he was still alive.

Indeed, the lyrics for the whole song work as a touching farewell to the Beatles, no matter how one interprets them. Through the title refrain “Now and then / I miss you,” Lennon and McCartney could be speaking to each other across time: Lennon from his New York apartment in the late 1970s, at a point in which he had not seen his old partner for several years; and McCartney from 2022, looking back over more than 40 years since the death of the friend he loved. Other repeated lines, such as “It’s all because of you,” could speak to the spirit of partnership inherent to the core of the Beatles, and the fact that all of them owe their success equally to each other.

But alongside the many poignant elements of the track, there are small moments where it strays into “imitation Beatles” territory. For instance, McCartney has added “a slide guitar solo inspired by George.” The motive for its inclusion is, presumably, to make up for the fact that Harrison is only minimally present on this recording, due to the brevity of the sessions 30 years ago. But the simple association of Harrison with slide guitar seems a bit of a Beatles cliché at this point. Likewise, the strings feel like they are aping the Beatles’ sound at times, harking back to the staccato arrangements on “I Am the Walrus” and “Eleanor Rigby.”

It is these details that might fuel the questioning of those who are already skeptical about whether this can really be considered a true Beatles recording. Might a more appropriate credit be: a John Lennon song, developed and produced by Paul McCartney, with cameo appearances by George Harrison and Ringo Starr? Some of this cynicism is valid. Can it really be a Beatles song if half of the band members are dead and unable to influence the creative process? But the world has enough cynicism. Whatever attitude each individual listener brings with them when they hear the track for the first time will likely play a large role in coloring their reception of it. It may not be a Beatles song in the same way that “Strawberry Fields Forever” is a Beatles song—recorded with all four of them in the room, and all four giving significant input. But it is still the last time we will ever hear new music from these men together. And somehow, it seems more apt and more wise to approach this project with the sincerity that fact deserves, rather than nitpicking at the crediting.

Even if “Now and Then” doesn’t stand among their best works, it’s an amazing thing to have a new song with these four men in 2023. And it does carry the spirit of The Beatles—not only in the sound of those familiar voices, but also in the story. It is fitting that the band should, again, be at the forefront of technological innovation for their final track, just as they were throughout their career. And it is also fitting that this last song should demonstrate, again, that yin and yang dynamic of the Lennon-McCartney partnership, with the dirge of Lennon’s demo transformed into something triumphant through McCartney’s restructuring and production. In this way, “Now and Then” serves as a moving coda to the Lennon-McCartney love story—with an old friend finishing off one final song for the very last time. But it is also a worthy closer to the Beatles discography. Not, perhaps, as powerful and definitive a climax as Abbey Road’s “The End,” but more like the unexpected bonus of “Her Majesty”—arriving out of nowhere, long after we thought the music had ended, to bring a final smile to Beatles fans across the world.