“Nothing has been created artificially or synthetically: “Everything is real and we are the ones who play.”…Paul McCartney’s warning served as a unique presentation of “Now and Then”, the nueva song by the Beatles, released on Thursday with great fanfare and with the impalpable assistance of Artificial Intelligence.
Although more than becoming the “fifth Beatle”, AI has rather provided a small and limited helpenough to isolate John Lennon’s voice and clean it of all external noises in that original recording on a home tape that Yoko Ono personally delivered to McCartney in the 90s, with a special slogan (“For Paul”) written in Lennon’s own handwriting two years before his tragic death in 1980.
The third Beatle, George Harrisonhowever, censored “Now and then” as a “fucking shit” and prevented the song from finally being incorporated into the “Anthology”. Two other songs contained on that tape, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, did make the cut, but Harrison’s veto condemned “Now and then” to oblivion… until now.
George, however, left the chords recorded to support John’s voice. McCartney has added new string arrangements and Ringo Starrha dusted off the drums for the occasion. So everything seems real and current, half a century after the Beatles broke up, and no one would say that AI has played an essential role in all this.
The “fifth Beatle” has in any case been Peter Jacksonthe director of “The Lord of the Rings”, who already used the same technology to separate the voices in the documentary series “Get Back” in 2021 (and who also directs the video that accompanies the release of “Now and then”).