Maybe just let it be?
Roll Over Beethoven
The Beatles — or at least their surviving two members — recently made a splash by releasing a new track that featured AI-isolated vocals from a 1978 John Lennon demo called “Now and Then.”
The result, a mid-tier and largely forgettable Beatles bop, had us wondering if perhaps it would have been best to let sleeping dogs lie. Lennon’s vocals in particular had an eerie quality to them, sounding almost Auto-Tuned after all the processing.
And while the track was advertised as being the very last song of the legendary rock band, world-renowned film director Peter Jackson, who pioneered the AI tech to isolate Lennon’s vocals for both the latest track and the recent documentary “Get Back,” isn’t entirely ready to call it quits just yet.
“It did cross my mind!” Jackson told British newspaper The Sunday Times when asked if another “final song” could appear in a year or two.
“We can take a performance from ‘Get Back,’ separate John and George [Harrison], and then have Paul {McCartney] and Ringo [Starr] add a chorus or harmonies,” he added. “You might end up with a decent song but I haven’t had conversations with Paul about that. It’s fanboy stuff, but certainly conceivable.”
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
If “Now and Then” is anything to go by — and that’s not to mention the absolute trainwreck of a music video accompanying it — we should take Jackson’s threat seriously.
Paul McCartney, one of the two Beatles still alive today, has been particularly enthusiastic about reviving his dead bandmate and close writing partner’s voice, with or without his direct consent.
“I know Paul misses John,” Giles Martin, who produced “Now and Then,” told The Sunday Times. “He was his best mate. There was a falling-out and he died.”
“It was so destructive for Paul,” he added. “But here he had John’s song and thought he’d like to work with him again. I don’t think that’s cynical.”
But even Jackson knows that the incredibly personal relationships between the legendary musicians deserve to be respected and — perhaps — left alone.
“It sounds like John is writing a message as an apology for however he may have behaved,” Jackson told the newspaper, referring to “Now and Then.”
“I found that incredibly moving, that the final Beatles song is the Beatles singing to each other,” he added.
Let’s hope the track stays that way: “final.”
More on the Beatles: The Beatles Just Released Their Final Song That Resurrects John Lennon’s Voice With AI
