It was a moment fans never expected: in late 2023, The Beatles released a final song — “Now And Then” — featuring all four members, decades after John Lennon’s death and long after the band’s last original recording.
Many called it a miracle. Others called it impossible.
Now, Giles Martin, son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin and producer of the track, has officially confirmed what many had suspected: AI technology was used to isolate and restore John Lennon’s voice — a revelation that has stirred deep emotion and awe across generations of fans.
“It’s still John,” Martin said in a recent interview. “What AI gave us was clarity, not imitation. We didn’t generate anything. We recovered what was already there.”
The Origin of the Track
The seed for “Now And Then” was planted in the late 1970s, when John recorded a rough demo of the song in his New York apartment. Years later, Yoko Ono gave that demo to Paul McCartney, along with others that would become “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love”.
While those tracks were completed in the 1990s, “Now And Then” was shelved — the audio quality was simply too poor. John’s voice was buried beneath noise, static, and the uneven quality of a home cassette tape.
But thanks to new technology developed during Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” documentary — an AI-based system that can separate voice from instrument, noise from clarity — Lennon’s original vocal was finally isolated and preserved.
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