Breaking up in 1970, no one expected The Beatles to release new music in 2023. The band has released their first new song since 1995, “Now and Then”. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, the members were able to make a hit out of an old John Lennon demo. Paul McCarney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr reunited in the mid 90’s in an attempt to work on new music by layering on top of Lennon’s demos, the issue being that they were on cassette, making it hard to isolate the tracks. The song was put on hold for a while, because they didn’t have the technology necessary to make it great. 

Peter Jackson, New Zealand film director and screenwriter, developed a technology that allowed them to “split all the different components into separate tracks based on machine learning.” Starting with the piano from Lennon’s original demo, they used AI to insert his voice into the verse written by McCartney, and inserted Harrison’s guitar from abandoned demo sessions.

 Jamie Shaffer, Beatles fan, was pleasantly surprised.

“I was shocked to find out that we were getting more music, I thought they had released the last of it,” said Shaffer. 

This has been emotional for many fans, because no one knew we would get a “last” Beatles song.

“The song is beautiful, it’s not a classic Beatles song- but a new hit,” Shaffer said.