According to a number of sources, Paul McCartney confirmed that The Beatles will release one “last” song later this year. He added that the song was recently finished with the help of artificial intelligence.
“It’s a very interesting thing,” he said of the involvement of artificial intelligence in the music industry during an interview on the BBC Radio 4 program The Today Show. “It’s something we are all tackling at the moment and trying to deal with what’s it mean, y’know. I don’t hear that much because I’m not on the internet that much but people will tell me there’s a track where John (Lennon) is singing one of my songs. It isn’t, it’s just AI, y’now. So all of that is kind of scary, but exciting because it’s the future,” he continued.
McCartney then explained how they’ve been able to use this technology to restore old material by Lennon and turn it into a composition by The Beatles. “We were able to use that kind of thing when Peter Jackson did the film Get Back, it was us making the Let It Be album. He was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano.
“We were able to get John’s voice and make it pure through AI and then we could mix the record, as you would normally do,” he concluded.
Although McCartney didn’t reveal the name of the track in question, it’s rumored to be “Now And Then” which was demoed by Lennon in 1978 and has previously been under consideration to be released by The Beatles. However, this is yet to be confirmed.
