Can a band produce a new song when they broke up more than 50 years ago and half of the band members are dead? In an interview with the BBC, Paul McCartney announced that a new Beatles song, which he referred to as a "final Beatles record" will be released later this year. There have been plenty of Beatles songs released since the band went their separate ways, but the catalog of previously unreleased recordings from rehearsals, concerts, and demos surely has a limit.
McCartney did not identify the song, but speculation is that it will be "Now and Then," which John Lennon wrote in 1978. He recorded it as a demo on a tape that was given to McCartney sometime after Lennon died in 1980. The three surviving Beatles worked on the song in 1995, but abandoned the effort because there was an annoying buzzing on Lennon's tape recording. And George Harrison didn't like the song. Harrison died in 2001.
But now we have artificial intelligence programs that can clean up the noise and distortion from an old cassette tape, and there are recordings of the 1995 session, so we can soon hear all four Beatles performing together on a song that was written after they broke up. But will it really be a Beatles song? The discussion at Metafilter brings up all sorts of questions, not only about the authenticity of this project, but the ethics involved. After all, half of the Beatles cannot approve of the release, nor even register an opinion on their own art. We haven't heard from Ringo Starr on the project, or how involved he is with it. What you you think?
(Image credit: Henry Grossman)
