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The ‘Last’ Song by the Beatles Will Hit the Airwaves Soon, Courtesy of AI

The track, “Now and Then,” comes from a batch of unreleased demos recorded by John Lennon, whose vocals have finally been isolated and enhanced by AI technology.

More than half a century after splitting up, the Fab Four are coming back—in a fashion—with a brand new track titled “Now and Then,” which is set to be released next Thursday. The song was written by John Lennon in the late 1970s at his New York City apartment. After his death, a cassette recording he had made was given to Paul McCartney by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono. But although McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison worked on the track in the 1990s, technological limitations left them unable to isolate Lennon’s vocals clearly enough to release it. Using the same artificial intelligence technology that director Peter Jackson used to enhance the audio for his 2021 docuseries Get Back, however, the surviving Beatles “extricated” Lennon’s voice from his piano playing on the tape, McCartney told BBC Radio 4 in June. “There it was, John’s voice, crystal clear,” McCartney said in a statement. “It’s quite emotional. And we all play on it, it’s a genuine Beatles recording. In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music, and about to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing.”