Paul McCartney has recorded what he calls the final Beatles song by using AI to pull vocals and piano from a late John Lennon demo, McCartney told BBC Radio 4’s Today program this morning (June 13). The song, which he did not name, will be released this year, he said.
The idea to use artificial intelligence to clean up rough demos came from Get Back director Peter Jackson, McCartney added. Jackson “was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette.” He continued, “We had John’s voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine: ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.’ So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had, and we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI. Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway.”
Fans speculate that the recording in question will be Lennon’s 1978 song “Now and Then,” long a potential Beatles reunion track, as The Guardian notes. It is one of several cassette demos that Lennon recorded shortly before his death in 1980, labeled “For Paul,” but an electrical buzz made sampling that recording impractical before modern AI software. The surviving Beatles tried to complete the track in the mid-1990s but gave up when George Harrison called it “fucking rubbish.”