Beatles co-founder Paul McCartney has revealed artificial intelligence (AI) helped finish the band’s ‘final’ song, due out in 2023. The musician said in an interview with BBC Radio 4, reports the BBC.
According to McCartney, the AI’s job was to “extract” John Lennon’s vocals from an old demo of the song.
“We just finished it and it’s coming out this year,” he said.
According to the BBC, director Peter Jackson helped “extract” Lennon’s voice from the recording on the old cassette, which released the eight-hour film “The Beatles: Get Back” in 2021, which premiered at the help of artificial intelligence. The creators of the image developed a system based on AI and neural networks that analyzed the sound of band members’ voices and musical instruments during rehearsals, separating them from background noise to create a “clean” sound. “.
“He (Jackson) was able to extract John’s voice from a clumsy piece of tape <...> We had John’s voice and piano, and he could separate them using AI. They say to the machine: “It’s a voice. It’s a guitar. Put the guitar away. » <…> We were able to take John’s voice and make it clear with this AI,” McCartney explained.
At the same time, the musician admitted that he is concerned about the use of artificial intelligence in the modern world.
“I don’t go online a lot, (but) people say to me, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a track where John sings one of my songs,’ and it’s just AI, you know? is kinda scary, but exciting because it’s the future. We just need to see where it leads,” McCartney shared.
“Last” Beatles song
McCartney did not specify which “last” Beatles song he was referring to. As suggested by the BBC, we are talking about the song Now And Then, written by Lennon in 1978. The band members had planned to present it in 1995, but the late George Harrison objected.
Now And Then was among the cassette demo recordings with the inscription “For Paul” made by Lennon shortly before his death and later given to McCartney by his widow Yoko Ono. Eventually, as part of the Beatles’ 1995-96 “reunion”, the compilation album Anthology included two previously unreleased compositions created based on these recordings – Free As A Bird and Real Love. They became the group’s first “new” songs in 25 years. In their original form, these compositions were of extremely poor quality, their “cleaning” was done by the producer and singer of the Electric Light Orchestra, Jeff Lynne.
In the mid-1990s, the Beatles worked on Now And Then for a while, but George Harrison called the song “garbage” and refused to take the time to polish the record. The BBC notes that the demo was accompanied by extraneous noise. In particular, it was accompanied by a constant “buzz” that echoed through Lennon’s apartment.
“The song had a chorus, but it was almost completely missing verses. We made a backing track, hard work that we haven’t really finished <…> It needed to be reworked a bit, but it had a nice verse and John sang it <…> (But) George didn’t like it. The Beatles embraced democracy, and we didn’t,” BBC quotes Lynn in an interview with Q magazine.
Over the years, McCartney has repeatedly spoken of his desire to complete work on Now And Then, the BBC recalls. He said so in 2012.
In 2009, a pirated CD version of the demo was released with no background noise. Beatles fans have speculated that it was stolen from Lennon’s apartment along with other personal items after the musician died.
In the fall of 2022, two previously unknown photographs of the Beatles, taken in 1961, were released in the UK.
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