Sir Ringo Starr is a Taylor Swift fan.
The Beatles drummer, 82, doesn’t like to let on the names of current artists and bands he listens to, but he did say he’s a fan of some “great girl singers”, including the 33-year-old ‘Shake It Off’ hitmaker.
He told People magazine: “I’m not naming anybody because I just like to listen to them, but there are several great bands out there, girl singers out there.
“I mean, the biggest star in the world, Taylor. We used to meet her when she was like, five, at the Grammys with her mother. And the beat goes on.”
Of his own iconic group’s enduring legacy, he added: “That’s what’s great. We’re blessed, as the Beatles, because each generation has a listen to us. They see, ‘What does that mean to those guys?’ So we’re still selling records, can you believe it? And we’re still remastering them, and we’re still putting them in different orders and putting out outtakes. Life is good.”
Ringo also commented on the forthcoming “final Beatles” song, for which they were able to isolate the late John Lennon’s vocals with a machine named after the ‘Eleanor Rigby’ group’s roadie Mal Evans.
He insisted: “This is absolutely John Lennon’s voice, taken off, as neat as we can, a cassette. And that’s all I can tell you!”
It comes after Sir Paul McCartney, 81, clarified that it doesn’t feature a digitally-generated likeness of the ‘Imagine’ singer’s voice.
He tweeted: “Been great to see such an exciting response to our forthcoming Beatles project. No one is more excited than us to be sharing something with you later in the year.
“We’ve seen some confusion and speculation about it. Seems to be a lot of guess work out there. Can’t say too much at this stage but to be clear, nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It’s all real and we all play on it. We cleaned up some existing recordings – a process which has gone on for years.
“We hope you love it as much as we do. More news in due course – Paul.”
The ‘Live and Let Die’ hitmaker had previously explained AI had been used to make John’s vocals on the song “pure”.
He told BBC Radio 4: “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.”
Sir Peter Jackson’s 2021 Beatles documentary ‘Get Back’ pushed them to complete the song because Paul explained the director “was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette.”
He 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 music legend didn’t name the song, but according to reports, it’s said to be ‘Now and Then’.
John – who was murdered in New York in 1980 aged 40 – penned the song and his widow Yoko Ono handed it to his bandmate 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.