Sir Paul McCartney will reunite with the late John Lennon on “the final Beatles song,” which has been finished using AI.
The surviving member of the legendary rock’n’roll group has revealed they used artificial intelligence on an old demo to extract Lennon’s vocals.
McCartney, 80, told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ show: “We just finished it up and it’ll be released this year.”
The music legend didn’t name the song, but according to reports, it’s said to be ‘Now and Then’.
Lennon – who was murdered in New York in 1980 aged 40 – penned the song and his widow Yoko Ono handed it to McCartney in 1994 on a tape labelled “For Paul”.
It had been considered for release as part of the band’s ‘Anthology’ project, which included a documentary, a three-volume set of double albums and a book on the history of the group.
However, they went for ‘Real Love’ and ‘Free as a Bird’ from the same tape.
Iconic Beatles producer George Martin refused to produce the former track so they recruited ELO’s Jeff Lynne, who had already co-produced the latter tune.
The same method was used in Peter Jackson’s 2021 three-part Beatles documentary ‘Get Back’.
McCartney said: “[Jackson] was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette.
“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.’
“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had. We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI. Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway.”
McCartney admits that AI is “kind of scary”.
However, he added: “It’s the future. We’ll just have to see where that leads.”
The Beatles’ final song will be shared with the world later this year, with a firm release date yet to be announced.
Late guitarist George Harrison – who died in 2001 aged 58 – penned their last new song, ‘I, Me, Mine’, from the LP ‘Let It Be’, which was released before their break-up in April 1970.
The Beatles also included 82-year-old drummer Sir Ringo Starr.