THE Beatles may have one last hit song in them yet – despite being without frontman John Lennon for more than 40 years.
It’s all thanks to artificial intelligence (AI).
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Sir Paul McCartney made the shock announcement on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, explaining that AI technology had been used to “extricate” Lennon’s voice from a “ropey” old demo so he could complete the song.
“We just finished it up and it’ll be released this year,” he said.
Lennon left a demo tape titled “For Paul” shortly before his untimely death in 1980, with a trio of songs on it.
“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’,” McCartney told Radio 4.
“So when we came to 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.”
Two songs on the cassette – Free As A Bird and Real Love – were previously cleaned up by producer Jeff Lynne before being released to the public in 1995 and 1996 respectively.
At the time, they were the Beatles first bits of “new” material in 25 years.
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Now, nearly 30 years later after their release – one last track is about to hit the floor.
What is the song?
The song has yet to be named.
However, it is thought to be an unreleased track from the Beatles’ Anthology series from 1995 called Now And Then.
The band had attempted to record the song while making the Anthology series, a consummation of their careers works, at the time.
But it was soon scrapped, with George Harrison declaring it “rubbish”. according to McCartney.
“It didn’t have a very good title, it needed a bit of reworking, but it had a beautiful verse and it had John singing it,” he told Q Magazine.
“[But] George didn’t like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn’t do it.”
And yet, McCartney has repeatedly talked about his desire to finish Lennon’s song since those years.
“That one’s still lingering around,” he told a BBC Four documentary on Jeff Lynne in 2012.
“So I’m going to nick in with Jeff and do it. Finish it, one of these days.”
Recent advancements in AI technology have afforded that opportunity.
The record has not been officially released by the band, but a decade-old leaked and incomplete version of the song online shows the track has already won the hearts of fans.
The apologetic love song, typical of Lennon’s work at the time, has been called “hauntingly beautiful” as the last, officially unreleased, Beatles song that remains today.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
