Sir Paul McCartney Announces a 'Final' Beatles Song

[Therapist4u]

Hi ALL! Beatles fans worldwide have more exciting great news....

Sir Paul McCartney has said AI ....artificial intelligence....has been used to help create what he calls "the final Beatles record". He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the technology had been used to "extricate" John Lennon's voice from an old demo so he could complete the song. "We just finished it up and it'll be released this year," he explained....to be a 1978 Lennon composition called "Now And Then".

It had already been considered as a possible "reunion song" for the Beatles in 1995, as they were compiling their career-spanning Anthology series. Sir Paul had received the demo a year earlier from Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono. It was one of several songs on a cassette labelled "For Paul" that Lennon had made shortly before his death in 1980.

Lo-fi and embryonic, the tracks were largely recorded onto a boombox as the musician sat at a piano in his New York apartment There were also said to have been technical issues with the original recording, which featured a persistent "buzz" from the electricity circuits in Lennon's apartment In 2009, a new version of the demo, without the background noise, was released on a bootleg CD. Fans have speculated this recording may not have been available in 1995, suggesting it was stolen from his apartment, along with other personal effects, after his death.In the intervening years, Sir Paul has repeatedly talked about his desire to finish the song."That one's still lingering around," he told a BBC Four documentary on Jeff Lynne in 2012. "So I'm going to nick in with Jeff and do it. Finish it, one of these days. It would seem that technology has now afforded the musician a chance to achieve that goal.

The turning point came with Peter Jackson's Get Back documentary, where dialogue editor Emile de la Rey trained computers to recognise the Beatles' voices and separate them from background noises, and even their own instruments, to create "clean" audio. The same process allowed McCartney to "duet" with Lennon on his recent tour, and for new surround sound mixes of Beatles' Revolver album to be created last year. " And now, there's new music from the Fab Four.

"He [Jackson] was able to extricate John's voice from a ropey little bit of cassette," McCartney told Radio 4's Martha Kearney. "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 to make what will be the last Beatles' record, it was a demo that John had [and] 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." However, the musician admitted that other applications of AI gave him cause for concern. "I'm not on the on the internet that much [but] people will say to me, 'Oh, yeah, there's a track where John's singing one of my songs', and it's just AI, you know? "It's kind of scary but exciting, because it's the future. We'll just have to see where that leads."

The star was talking to BBC Radio 4 ahead of the launch of a photography exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Titled Eye Of The Storm, it features portraits taken by McCartney on his own camera, between December 1963 and February 1964, as the Beatles were catapulted to global fame

See more about that here

https://community.aarp.org/t5/Rock-N-Roll/Beatlemania-Revisited-McCartney-s-1964-Eyes-of-the-Storm/m...

[MaVolta]

And here’s McCartney’s interview to clarify: “we all play on it…”

https://people.com/paul-mccartney-new-beatles-music-not-artificially-made-7551944

[MaVolta]

Ringo and George were already onboard with this project many years ago! They did similar work in the 90’s for the Anthology albums. George had already recorded his part before he passed. 

In recent interviews Sirs Ringo and Paul have assured fans that the voice is 100% John. There is nothing fake or synthesized about his vocals. I think that Paul’s misstep was using the term “AI’. They both have explained it is the same technology used by Peter Jackson on the Get Back series.

See more in Ringo’s birthday interview here: https://people.com/ringo-starr-nothing-makes-me-feel-old-as-he-turns-83-exclusive-7556629

Peace and Love! HBD Ringo!

[BeatleloverKT]

I am excited about another Beatles song. To be 

able to do that in 2023 is amazing. I can never

get enough of their music 🎼💜

[CoraD393425]

I'm not on board with AI, and engineering a new Beatle song doesn't endear AI to me. 

I've seen this story on the new, how they're going to drop in John's vocals. My question is what about George? 

[WebWiseWoman]

Exactly my question...

I don't believe either of these "modern" men would approve or appreciate; I so hope Yoko and Olivia protest and prevent this from happening!

[MaVolta]

Yoko gave Paul the tape. It was songs John recorded marked “for Paul”.  So far, Yoko has been silent in the press since the story broke.