English rock band The Beatles released their supposed final song titled “Now and Then” on Thursday.
The song was made using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to take the vocals from a 1977 John Lennon demo tape recorded before his untimely death in 1980.
Though the song is being hailed by the remaining members of the band as a “last hurrah,” in reality its execution falls flat on its face, creating a disappointing final note for the band.
It feels like every other conversation relating to technology these days relates to some sort of generative AI - whether it be ChatGPT- written articles, deep fakes of politicians spreading misinformation or humorous generated images of celebrities in comical situations.
“Now and Then” started life as a demo cassette tape by Lennon in his New York City apartment, and was one of three demos that the remaining three band members worked on in their 1994 reunion according to a Nov. 2020 Independent article.
The remaining members of the band - Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr- ended up finishing two of the demos releasing them as singles the following year. The “Now and Then” demo was ultimately shelved after one day of the remaining members working on the song.
Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001, seemingly jeopardizing the song’s chance to ever see the light of day.
It was only when remaining Beatles members, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, were informed about AI software that allowed the band to separate his vocals from the piano in the track.
McCartney and Starr used the acoustic guitar tracks from George Harrison’s 1994 recording for the song, according to a Nov. 2 USA Today article.
“Now and Then” feels like the most anti-climatic ending possible to the history of one of the most important bands in the history of music. Though it’s not a full-blown disaster by any means, it feels like a song that’s not supposed to exist.
The track is simply all over the place. Despite being the focus of the song, Lennon’s vocals get buried in the mix behind almost every other instrument, of which there are an absurd amount.
It’s hard to hear what he’s singing behind the barrage of pianos, strings and guitars that never give the song a moment to breathe. For a song that is dedicated to Lennon and Harrison, their additions are unfortunately the quietest parts.
All of the elements of the song feel thrown into each other and they don’t mesh at all. It’s crazy that at no point of the recording nobody asked why the song needs so many damn instruments.
It’s almost as if the band realized that the AI-separated vocals sound really bad, and they decided to keep making the song louder and more complex until they decided people wouldn’t notice.
As a musician, something feels gross about taking a friends’ demo and making it into a full song after their death.
If someone were to take one of my unfinished demos, slap a ridiculous amount of overdubs on it and call it my final song, I probably wouldn’t know because I would be dead, but if I did know, I would be horrified.
It makes me more sad that they felt the need to “finish” the song, instead of letting it be, because “Now and Then” feels like an attempt to finish an idea that was never meant to be.
Despite the focus of the song in most articles being about how the Beatles used AI to it, the reality is that the song’s release wasn’t to showcase AI, or end their legacy with a bang – it was to give Mccartney and Starr closure and celebrate their bandmates.
It doesn’t matter that the song is a mess, because it was never about the song or technology. It’s really about two bandmates finishing a song for the last time.
That doesn’t make this song any better though.
