The Beatles released a new song, “Now And Then,” taking an old demo tape of John Lennon from the 1970s and extracting the vocals using AI technology. Paul McCartney then layered multiple parts atop the work, and Ringo Starr performed a drum track to get as close as possible to what a Beatles song might sound like in 2023.
The song is haunting, and not in a good way. A listener can’t help but hone in on the AI-assisted voice of John Lennon and remember that it’s partially not real. It’s a computer program approximating many of Lennon’s characteristics. While the demo voice is included in the track, the AI has to do the heavy lifting to separate the sounds from Lennon’s prior recording and perform several tricks to make it a clean, modern-sounding vocal atop this recording.
John Lennon died in 1980 when a gunman infamously shot him outside Central Park in New York City as the former Beatle stepped outside and signed an autograph for his eventual killer. With such a brutal death in the zeitgeist, it makes the listening experience a difficult one as it’s impossible not to think of the vocalist’s demise while the track plays.
The production is clean and emulates the feel of John Lennon’s late solo work more than anything in the Beatles catalog. Along with McCartney and Jeff Lynne, who worked on the track in 1995 before they abandoned the song because the vocals were too poor in quality to work with, Giles Martin, the son of the Beatles’ late producer George Martin, produced the song.
Before the song’s release, Lennon’s son Sean commented on using AI in the recording, saying, “My dad would’ve loved that because he was never shy to experiment with recording technology. I think it’s really beautiful.”
Sean Lennon's comments come from a brief documentary that highlighted the creation of “Now And Then,” which started with the 1995 Beatles Anthology project along with “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love” but didn’t make the final cut because the technology couldn’t get Lennon’s vocals to work at the time.
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According to the documentary, the group worked with film director Peter Jackson to obtain this AI program, which produced the final result. Jackson has been at the forefront of audio and video restoration technology with his recent Get Back Beatles documentary and They Shall Not Grow Old, which modernized footage from World War I.
With the blessing of Lennon’s child and former bandmates, it’s easy to gloss over the potential ethical problems of AI. Musicians, artists, actors, and writers in the future will be subject to these computer programs emulating their work in what the AI perceives as their style. However, there are significant ethical considerations regarding where art begins and where a computer stealing someone’s likeness should end.
In this case, producer Giles Martin claimed in an interview with Variety that he kept strict limits on the technology and didn’t use AI beyond Lennon’s main vocal. The backing vocals were spliced in from other Beatles songs and old recordings. “It might have been easier if I used AI, but I didn’t. And it’s funny, because it gives a different quality,” he said, admitting that something feels different about AI when it’s used in production.
Regardless of the ethics of AI use in creating “new” songs based on past artists like the Beatles, fans overall have been underwhelmed by “Now and Then," mostly viewing the song as flat and uninspired.
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