More than 50 years later, the four boys in the wind are back: an unreleased Beatles song recorded using artificial intelligence to replicate John Lennon’s voice will be released this year, Paul McCartney has announced.
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As the potential of AI sparks fear and envy in the music industry, the musician with the legendary Liverpool band, who is approaching his 81st birthday, revealed the information in an interview aired on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday.
“We came to do the last Beatles recording, it was a demo by John that we worked from,” Macca explained.
“We just finished it and it’s coming out this year,” he added.
“We managed to take John’s voice and clean it up using AI to mix the recording,” he continued.
He explained that the idea came after the documentary series that Peter Jackson was directing in 2021.
For “Get Back”, the director of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy took “the voice of John” from a cassette by separating it from the piano using new technologies.
In April 1970, six months after the release of Abbey Road and a month before Let It Be, the Beatles announced their split. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr’s ten years together have resulted in 14 best-selling albums, nearly one billion records sold and the shooting of several films.
Despite the deaths of Lennon in 1980 and Harrison’s in 2001, Beatlemania remains fierce around the world and the possibilities offered by AI have already given fans attempts to bring them together or the latest works by Paul McCartney with his youthful voice to reinterpret.
When asked about these developments, McCartney revealed the preparation of this new song, which he did not name.
The BBC believes it is “probably” a 1978 composition by Lennon entitled “Now and Then”, which was considered for a compilation back in 1995.
It appeared on a cassette tape entitled “For Paul” that Lennon had recorded shortly before his assassination in New York in 1980. Musician Yoko Ono’s widow then gave them to their recipient as a gift.
Paul McCartney hadn’t hidden since then that he wanted to give the play a new lease of life, but had always stated that the project never succeeded due to opposition from George Harrison, who didn’t like it.
The advent of AI in the music industry raises enormous financial and ethical questions. The process serves to replicate works by renowned musicians. Fake works by artists like Eminem, Drake, The Weeknd or Oasis were created using artificial intelligence.
British singer Sting recently predicted a “battle” by artists to “defend our human capital against AI”.
“We can’t let the machines take over, we have to be careful,” said the 71-year-old former Police singer. “Maybe it works for electronic music. But I don’t think I’ll be touched by the songs that express emotions.
For his part, Paul McCartney thought the phenomenon was “very interesting”: “It’s something we’re all fearing at the moment and trying to understand what it means.”
“There’s a good side and a scary side, we’ll see where it goes,” he added.
The musician, particularly the author of “Yesterday,” the most-broadcast song of the 20th century, remains hyperactive. He has enjoyed a rich solo career and just a few days after blowing out his 80 candles, he once again became the oldest headliner at England’s legendary Glastonbury festival last year.
He was speaking on Tuesday at the opening of an exhibition of 250 unpublished photographs of the Beatles taken by “Sir Paul” in their early days, in 1963 and 1964, at the National Portrait Gallery in London.