Fans of The Beatles are about to hear a brand new song from the band in the coming months, all thanks to AI and cutting-edge music technology.
Last month, Paul McCartney revealed he and drummer Ringo Starr are releasing the “final” Beatles song in the near future.
The track was originally demoed by John Lennon on a cassette just before his death and addressed to McCartney.
However, McCartney claimed that AI would be bringing Lennon’s voice back to life for the final song – however, Starr has now disagreed.
Speaking in a new interview with People, the drummer said: “This is absolutely John Lennon’s voice, taken off, as neat as we can, a cassette.”
Starr went on to add that was “all I can tell you!”
The song may well be Now And Then, a song dug up during the Beatles Anthology in the 1990s. However, neither surviving members of the band would confirm.
McCartney went on to detail some of the process, saying Lennon’s voice is coming out “pure”.
McCartney told the BBC: “When we came to make what will be the last Beatles record it was a demo that John had that we worked on and we’ve just finished it up, it’ll be released this year.
“We were able to get John’s voice and make it pure through AI and then we could mix the record, as you would normally do.”
Describing how the use of AI in the song worked, he said the software was taught which parts of Lennon’s performance to dig out and use.
McCartney later clarified the use of the cassette, saying: “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.”
McCartney and Ringo have not yet revealed when the new song will be released to their fans.
