Paul McCartney has revealed that artificial intelligence has enabled a “final” Beatles song.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning [June 13] that the technology had been used to “extricate” John Lennon‘s voice from an old demo so he could complete the song.
“We just finished it up and it’ll be released this year,” he explained, reports BBC News.
During work on Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary, the technology was used to isolate Beatles’ voices to create “clean” audio.
“He [Jackson] was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette,” McCartney told Radio 4’s Martha Kearney. “We had John’s voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine. ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar’. So when we came to to make what will be the last Beatles’ record, it was a demo that John had [and] we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI. Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway.”
The track in question is possibly “Now And Then“, an unfinished song by Lennon, recorded in 1978 as a demo, which was considered for inclusion on The Beatles Anthology, following “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love“.