Paul McCartney Says a New Beatles Record Is Coming—with AI John Lennon
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Just when you think 2023 couldn’t get any weirder, John Lennon rises from the dead. Well, sort of—with the help of AI, his vocals have been added to a new Beatles song.
In a recent interview with BBC, Paul McCartney said the technology was used to “extricate” Lennon’s voice from old recording demos. In other words, McCartney and co. Lennon’s vocals from an unreleased track, cleaned it up, and used it to complete a new song. According to McCartney, the band recently finished the process. “It’ll be released this year,” he said.
The song’s title has not been revealed, but Deadline reports that fans think it pulls from Lennon’s 1978 track, “Now and Then.” It’s the last song he recorded before his death in 1980. Years later, Lennon's former wife, Yoko Ono, provided his bandmates with all of he artist's final demos for The Beatles Anthology project in 1995. Two of his songs, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” were included, but “Now and Then” was never released due to poor sound quality.
According to Deadline, Lennon recorded the 1978 demos with a boombox at his apartment. The remaining members of The Beatles were able to clean up some of the tracks, but in an interview years later, McCartney said “Now and Then” sounded like “rubbish.” As we know, technology has come a long way since then. Could AI be the key to resurfacing the track once and for all?
We can’t say for sure, but seems likely. McCartney said he was inspired to revisit Lennon’s demos after watching Peter Jackson’s documentary, Get Back, which used advanced technology to clean old audio clips. While speaking with BBC, McCartney explained the process. “They tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice. This is the guitar. Lose the guitar.’” When The Beatles decided to record their new track, they used the same method. “It was a demo that John had [and] we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI,” he said. “Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway.”
Though McCartney looks forward to releasing the new song, he says he understands hesitation from some fans to repurpose Lennon’s voice. “I’m not on the Internet that much [but] people will say to me, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s a track where John’s singing one of my songs,’ and it’s just AI, you know? It’s kind of scary, but exciting because it’s the future. We’ll just have to see where that leads."
From: Esquire US
