The Beatles’ Final Song “Now And Then” To Be Released Next Week

The Beatles have announced the release date of their “last” new song. Over the summer, Paul McCartney told the BBC that he had recorded what he described as the band’s “last song” with the help of AI and we now have a release date.

“Now and Then”, based on a 1970s demo recording by John Lennon, was completed last year by McCartney and Ringo Starr. The track will be released Thursday, Nov. 2 as the final track on the new edition of the Beatles’ anthologies, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, known as the Red and Blue albums, it was announced today. It will be preceded by a documentary about the making of the song, which will premiere on Wednesday, Nov. 1.

In the BBC interview, McCartney said that the new AI technology that was not available in 1995 now allowed him to “extricate” Lennon’s voice from the cassette recordings. The new single contains guitar that Harrison had recorded nearly 30 years ago, a new drum part by Starr, with McCartney’s bass, piano and a slide guitar solo he added as a tribute to Harrison, who died in 2001. Backup vocals are done by McCartney and Starr.

While McCartney explained to the BBC that the technology was merely being used to lift Lennon’s vocals from the late-’70s lo-fi demo, many internet speculators expressed (ill-founded) outrage over the notion that McCartney was using AI to create a Lennon-soundalike.

“We’ve seen some confusion and speculation about it,” McCartney said in tweet at the time. “Seems to be a lot of guess work out there. Can’t say too much at this stage but to be clear, nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It’s all real and we all play on it. We cleaned up some existing recordings – a process which has gone on for years.”

“This is the last track, ever, that you’ll get the four Beatles on the track. John, Paul, George, and Ringo,” Starr said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.