The Beatles to release final song that includes John Lennon’s vocals

In 1978, two years before John Lennon was killed, the singer recorded a handful of demos on cassette that turned into the Beatles songs “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” which the remaining band members released in 1995 and ’96 as part of their Anthology series. But now, thanks to AI, the third Lennon-composed track from that cassette will be heard — resulting in the final Beatles song. 

“Now and Then” will be released on Nov. 2 at 10 a.m. ET, and a 12-minute, behind-the-scenes video titled Now and Then – The Last Beatles Song will drop on Nov. 1 at 3:30 p.m. ET via the Beatles’ YouTube channel.

WATCH: The trailer for Now and Then – The Last Beatles Song: 

The Beatles tried to finish “Now and Then” during those mid-’90s sessions, but producer Jeff Lynne told BBC Radio 4 in June 2023 that they abandoned it after working on it for an afternoon.

“The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses,” he told the BBC. “We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didn’t finish.” The demo was also of poor quality, with interfering background noise.

Peter Jackson, the director and producer of the 2021 Beatles documentary Get Back, was the key to cleaning up Lennon’s vocals. 

“We had John’s voice and a piano and [Jackson] could separate them with AI,” Paul McCartney also told BBC Radio 4. “They tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.’ So when we came 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.”

Despite AI allowing this final Beatles song, the English singer-songwriter is a bit wary of the technology.

“It’s kind of scary but exciting, because it’s the future,” he added. “We’ll just have to see where that leads.”