Now and Then
The Beatles release their final song, with a little help from AI
WillowTree President and bestselling author Tobias Dengel explores, in practical terms, how to prepare customer experiences for a voice-first future.
The Sound of the Future connects the dots about this emerging paradigm to vividly illustrate how business leaders can stay ahead of the game, rather than scrambling to catch up, as voice technology gradually reveals its power.
It was well over a decade from John Lennon’s murder in 1980 when Yoko Ono called up Paul McCartney, letting him know of a discovery. A cassette tape had been found, containing some demos Lennon had recorded in the latter part of his life, while at home raising his son.
The remaining members of the Beatles were working on The Beatles Anthology, a massive retrospective project released in the mid-90’s consisting of a serial documentary, a three volume set of double albums, and a book.
Some songs were able to be salvaged and released as part of the Anthology effort. And one, in particular, simply had such poor fidelity that seemingly nothing could be done with it: a song called Now and Then.
Fast forward 20 years, and Peter Jackson - the director famous for The Lord of the Rings trilogy - had taken on the task of cutting a new Beatles documentary from the 60+ hours of unused footage from the band’s 1970 film Let It Be.
As part of this filmmaking process, Jackson’s team used AI to “de-couple” audio sources from each other and newly isolate them as independently recorded tracks. The original impetus for this was to be able to hear the band’s covert conversations they had inside the studio, which are (intentionally) obscured by instruments playing at the same time.
The technology would prove to be effective elsewhere, including in separating John Lennon’s vocals from his piano on the Now and Then demo…suddenly making it possible to add new contributions from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, an old guitar solo recorded decades ago by George Harrison, and officially have what will now be known as the Beatles’ final song.
The band also released this video, which combines new footage of the two remaining Beatles with all manner of old video footage, much of which is enhanced with AI in various ways.
The response to the video is similar to the response to Now and Then itself: it brings out a lot of emotion from fans of the band for which Beatles music was a soundtrack to most of life.
In a full-circle moment, the Beatles elected to package Now and Then, the final Beatles song, with Love Me Do, the Beatles’ very first song, in the single’s official release.
It should be noted why this is such a powerful moment for music fans: despite the fact that this new song was made possible by AI, it only matters because it is authentic. It’s an actual song, recorded by the actual band, enmeshed in the band’s actual history, authorized and endorsed by the entire constellation of Beatles’ decision-makers and estates.
A special human moment made possible by AI. Probably not the last.
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