Next week, The Beatles—yes, the legendary rock band from the 1960s—will be back with their first new song in decades, thanks to an AI algorithm.
Remaining band members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr made the announcement today; the song, dubbed “Now and Then,” arrives on Thursday, Nov. 2 at 10 a.m. EST.
The chances of a new Beatles song faded after John Lennon’s death over 40 years ago. But before his murder, Lennon recorded a demo for "Now and Then" with vocals and piano. His wife, Yoko Ono Lennon, then gave the demo to band members in 1994.
“At the same time, Paul, George (Harrison) and Ringo also recorded new parts and completed a rough mix for ‘Now And Then’ with producer Jeff Lynne,” the group said in a press release. “At that point, technological limitations prevented John’s vocals and piano from being separated to achieve the clear, unclouded mix needed to finish the song.”
As a result, the group shelved the project for more than 25 years. It wasn’t until 2021 when film director Peter Jackson released the documentary The Beatles: Get Back that work on “Now and Then” was revived.
The documentary relied on unused footage from the band’s rehearsals in 1969. To improve the audio quality, Jackson's team created a “machine learning system” that allowed them to de-mix the mono soundtrack of the original footage.
It’s unclear how WingNut Films’ MAL audio technology works. But in a video, Jackson implied the system was trained to replicate the voices of the various Beatles members to fill in gaps in the original audio recordings.
"So we can take all these mono tracks, and split up all the instruments, and just hear the vocals, the guitars," he said. "That allows us to remix it really cleanly.”
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