New Beatles Music Coming Sooner Than You Think
Beatles fans around the world were stunned to hear of new music from the Beatles – but when will we hear it? We might have an answer: Magician and actor Penn…
Now And Then Celebrates One Year
John Pratt/Keystone/Getty Images
Beatles fans around the world were stunned to hear of new music from the Beatles - but when will we hear it? We might have an answer:
Magician and actor Penn Jillette, on his weekly podcast, Penn's Sunday School, says producer Giles Martin played him the new Beatles song, reportedly John Lennon's "Now & Then," during a recent visit to London's Abbey Road Studios.
And, while also not saying the name of the song, like Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, he says:
- It will be out in September.
- It contains a little bit of an unreleased version of "Because" off their last album, 1969's Abbey Road.
- Using Artificial Intelligence software, Paul's voice was made to sound younger.
- Ringo refused to add a new drum part to the song until Martin convinced him otherwise.
Jillette also said Martin is remixing and remastering The Beatles' 1973 hits compilations 1962-1966 (Red Album) and 1967-1970 (Blue Album).
So, the speculation is that the new song, along with the other two Lennon songs they finished for the Anthology collection, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" will be added to this new release.
Back in June McCartney clarified his comments about the song:
Paul McCartney has taken to social media to clarify reports last week about a new Beatles song that was reportedly completed with help from AI.
Sir Paul said, “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.”
He added, “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.”
The buzz about this Beatles project happened after Macca talked about it in an interview with BBC Radio 4. Sir Paul said this song came from an old John Lennon demo tape. As far as AI goes, McCartney told the BBC, “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI so that then we could mix the record as you would normally do — it gives you some sort of leeway.”
