AI helps The Beatles record a new song: Cool or Creepy?
In 2019, Roy Orbison went on a concert tour. You may be wondering how this was possible considering that Roy had died three decades earlier. Well, get this, a hologram of Roy was created. It was put on a stage with a band. His vocals were cleaned up. And they synched it all up.
It sounds pretty cool, right? The tour stopped in Waukegan; about a half hour from where I live. We were preparing to go to the concert when my partner looked at me and said she changed her mind about going. The idea of it all creeped her out. I understood. There's a fine line between cool and creepy and this show was right on the border.
However, there apparently were plenty of people who liked this. The next time around, there was a hologram of Buddy Holly that joined Roy for a concert tour. That was way too much for me. In fact, in my opinion, that was the actual day the music died.
So let's take this to another level. The Beatles broke up more than five decades ago. John Lennon was murdered in 1980. George Harrison died about twenty years later. You would think those circumstances would prevent the Fab Four from producing any new music, right? Not so fast my friends; welcome to the world of artificial intelligence.
John Lennon wrote and recorded a demo tape of what is now known as “Now and Then” in the 1970s. The song never made it on to any of his solo albums. In 1994, Yoko Ono gave Paul McCartney a tape of this song. The surviving Beatles and Jeff Lynne worked on it, but the recording was so raw and incomplete that nothing could be done. The song was set aside. The good news was that those sessions did produce the songs “Free as Bird” and “Real Love.”
It's now twenty-eight years later. Artificial Intelligence can recreate those Lennon vocals. They'll be stronger and cleaner than what was on the original recording. Hence, this fall when “Now and Then” is released, we'll have what McCartney calls the final Beatles record.
Once again, is it cool or is it creepy? There’s room for it to be plenty of both. Even McCartney is somewhat unsure of it:
“It's kind of scary but exciting, because it's the future. We’ll just have to see where that leads.”
As for it being the final Beatles record, is it really a Beatles record if it isn't John’s actual voice on the song? I guess we’ll just have to wait to hear it before we each make that decision. Either way, it's going to be exciting for fans of technology and fans of The Beatles.
The Beatles and AI. Who would have ever dreamed of this when we first heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, in 1964? The future is now.