Artificial Intelligence has changed the way things work around the world now. You can just instruct AI to do any previously deemed impossible task. From making art and creating content to designing, you can achieve anything you want right on your smartphone with the correct tool.
Now we are gradually witnessing a shift of AI toward more mainstream media as musicians use AI to create something previously unheard of. One of the greatest musicians of all time, Sir Paul McCartney, the bass guitarist, and singer for “The Beatles,” is working on a new song, and we will witness the use of AI in this production.
This song is being termed the last song from the Beatles, and the hype is quite real for this much-anticipated piece.
So how does he plan to use AI for the last song? That is what we will see in detail in this article.
Paul McCartney Using AI for a New Beatles Record
Paul McCartney, the singer and bass guitarist for the Beatles, is using AI to release a brand new final song from the Beatles, which will be made available to the public as well. This will not be a remastered version of some previous song, either. It will be a completely new track that the public has yet to hear.
In a recent interview with BBC’s Radio 4 Today program, McCartney confirmed this new development.
AI will be used primarily to separate John Lennon’s voice from a track he sang long back, along with a piano and guitar as the instruments in the background. In the interview, McCartney said that AI would be used to “extricate” Lennon’s voice from the demo file.
After separating the voice, other instruments will fill in, and we will get a new song.
The title of the upcoming song is Now and Then, and it is a part of the collection of songs that Lennon provided to McCartney on a cassette before his death. Sir Paul received the demo tracks on a cassette from Lennon’s widow after his death, and the cassette had a label saying “For Paul.” All the songs in the cassette were recorded on a boombox in Lennon’s New York apartment, with him singing and playing the piano to fill in the music to the lyrics.
Most of the songs from the cassette have been adopted for some of the songs already released. But Now and Then is a completely new apologetic love song that has never made its way to the public, that is, until now.
Initially, there was speculation about this song being a part of the collection released by the Beatles in 1995. Two other notable songs from the cassette did make it out to the collection, but Now and Then never saw the light of a release. This was because George Harrison initially refused to work on the song, saying the sound quality of Lennon’s voice in the track was “rubbish,” so the Beatles decided not to include the song in their release in 1995.
But now, with AI, they can do things that were completely impossible back in 1995.
Sir Paul McCartney is bringing back to life the final song from the Beatles to the masses. We do not have any official release date, but we can expect it to be sometime in the Q4 of 2023.
In an interview, Paul McCartney shared a lot about how the work began on the song. He said, “He [Jackson] was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette.”
Paul added, “We had John’s voice and a piano, and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.”
The musician is admitting to the fact that he is concerned and skeptical about how people will take the use of AI in the new song. But he wanted to finish the song someday for Lennon, and now with AI, this is becoming a reality.
The bass guitarist also confirmed in an interview that they have finally completed the song, which will be released this year. This could be one of the greatest finishes of all time to a journey of 60+ years in the making, from one of the greatest bands ever to walk the face of Earth.
