“Now and Then,” the Beatles’ “final” song to be released

At 2pm GMT, the Beatles’ “final” song, Now and Then, will be made available, providing an unanticipated farewell to the greatest band in the UK.

The University of Liverpool’s Dr. Holly Tessler, an expert on the history and legacy of the Beatles, thinks that nearly all Beatles fans should mark this as a momentous occasion. All four members of the group contributed to the song’s musical arrangements, including John Lennon’s vocals from the song’s original late-70s demo and George Harrison’s guitar, which was recorded in 1995. Lennon wrote and performed it at his Dakota building apartment in New York City, where he was assassinated in 1980.

The tape, marked “For Paul,” was given to Paul McCartney by Yoko Ono, the widow of John Lennon, in 1994. Along with Lennon’s vocals, it was released in 1995 as a part of the Beatles’ multimedia archive project Anthology. McCartney, Harrison, and Ringo Starr completed the songs Free As a Bird and Real Love using the vocals from Lennon. But Olivia Harrison, Harrison’s widow, claims that George believed Now and Then’s technical problems were insurmountable and came to the conclusion that the song could not be completed to a high enough calibre.

Author of the critically acclaimed Shout! The True Story of the Beatles and biographies of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison Philip Norman says that artificial intelligence (AI) has brought the band back into the modern era. Lennon’s voice has been more effectively isolated thanks to AI technology, though McCartney has made a point of saying that nothing has been synthetically or artificially created. The Lennon vocal was then incorporated into new McCartney and Starr-recorded song parts, Harrison’s 1995 guitar lines, and a revised string arrangement.

Olivia Harrison stated that George “would have fully accompanied Paul and Ringo in finishing the Now and Then recording.” McCartney described the project as “quite emotional,” noting that it is exciting to be working on Beatles music in 2023 and preparing to release a new song that the public has not heard yet.

According to Tessler, the release of Now and Then could alter how people perceive the band’s legacy as a whole and how they are perceived in society. Rather than it being four young, irate men saying they do not want to collaborate any more, she thinks this will give them an opportunity to tenderly break up and make it more meaningful.