Paul McCartney is, without a doubt, one of the most recognized artists of all time. Mainly for having been part of The Beatles, of course, since the four from Liverpool marked a before and after in the history of music, the fan phenomenon, the spread of Eastern cultures in the West, etc. It is impossible to talk about the history of contemporary music and not devote at least an entire chapter to McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr.
From the very moment in which the separation of the group took place, rumors began to circulate and requests for a new meeting of the same to take place. This, of course, ceased to be possible that disastrous Monday, December 8, 1980 when Lennon, who was returning to his house in the emblematic Dakota building in New York, was shot by Mark David Chapman. At some point it was said that Paul McCartney was in talks with Julian Lennon to assume the role of his father in a meeting, but this never materialized and, in fact, it is not even entirely clear where. these rumors arose.
After leaving The Beatles, Paul McCartney maintained a successful musical career, whether it was with the ever-changing Wings, in collaborations with other artists and solo, the artist knew how to chart his own career away from the shadow of his previous band, although it is imaginable , and understandable, that the residue of having been part of something as legendary as The Beatles has always weighed, and continues to do so, in their tribulations. And of course, that on some occasion have dreamed of the already impossible reunion.
Or maybe it’s not impossible anymore? Well indeed, it seems that artificial intelligence is going to make possible something that seemed impossible. As we can read in The Guardian, Paul McCartney has used AI to, starting from a “demo” (a test recording, usually of low quality) grecorded by John Lennon, rebuild his voice to record and publish a new song by The Beatles.
Over the past few months we have seen several cases in which artificial intelligence had been used to imitate the voice of artists current interpreting other songs, something that has generated a rather uneven response among artists. However, this is the first case in which we see that the use of AI comes from a directly involved party, in this case Paul McCartney, to generate new content that is integrated into its official catalog.
It is speculated that the song is Now and Then, a demo recorded by Lennon on radio cassette, and which was stored on a tape that the artist intended to send to McCartney, and has been in his possession ever since. And so we come to the publication of The Beatles: Get Back, a documentary filmed by Peter Jackson and which came to light in 2021. For its realization, AI was used to segregate the voices of the band from the sound of the instruments, something that inspired McCartney to recover Now and Then to, in this way, and with the help of AI, record The Beatles’ last song in 2023.
