The new Beatles song out today, Now and Then, comes with a music video that superimposes the images of John Lennon and George Harrison over modern-day footage.
Over 50 years after the band broke up, there is a new Beatles song out today. Sort of. It even comes with a new Beatles music video—though some fans may wish it didn’t.
The song, “Now and Then,” was one of several unfinished songs written by John Lennon before his murder in 1980, which his wife Yoko Ono gave to the remaining Beatles after his death. In a 12-minute documentary short about the new song, Now and Then: The Last Beatles Song—which is now streaming on Disney+—Paul McCartney explains that “Now and Then” was one of Lennon’s song that he, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr attempted to finish in the ’90s, as part of the 1995 documentary series The Beatles Anthology. Two other songs, based on demos recorded by Lennon, were released with that documentary series: “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.”
The audio for Lennon’s voice on the demo of “Now and Then” was too faint to make it work as a Beatles song, so the other Beatles gave up on releasing it at the time. Then Harrison died of cancer in 2001, it felt like the Beatles were over for good. Then director Peter Jackson and his team invented a unique way of restoring and separating the old Beatles audio tracks, while he was working on the 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back. With that technology, they were able to separate John’s vocals on the track.
