“Now and Then” - The Beatles Review
The new, and likely, final Beatles song to be released came out this week and it is a great song to end the band with. I love the background story of how this song was made and it is all explained in this video on The Beatles YouTube Channel. Essentially, this was a demo John made before he was murdered. In the 1990s Paul, George, and Ringo recorded another demo with it, but had a difficult time separating the vocals from the piano so ultimately shelved it.
In 2022 with the help of self-learning AI developed for the Get Back movie they were able to completely separate John’s vocals from the piano and produce the track while also using George’s guitar part from the 90s.
The melody of the song is amazing and definitely sounds like classic John Lennon. The vocals do sound a bit different compared to the instrumentation and production, but it’s not bad over overwhelming. I do think they should’ve tried to record it with completely analog tech since lots of the sounds are modernly loud and compressed especially during the chorus. One of my only minor gripes with the song is that John’s vocals almost get drowned out during the chorus and I think less could’ve done more.
It is incredible that you have 40-year-old John singing with 50-year-old George while 80-year-old Paul and Ringo are on rhythm. The strings are a great addition and make the track sound more like a Beatles song than a sole John song.
The guitar work that is played in the first verse after the chorus is great whether it’s George or Paul. I like the slide guitar solo homage to George Harrison played by Paul.
I enjoy the fact that even though the song was likely written as a love song to Yoko, it has morphed into a song about remembering the past. Now that the remaining Beatles are in the elderly part of their life, the song kind of takes on a similar theme to Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” cover.
This song is really good and succeeds at being the conclusion to the greatest band of all time. We can only hope that the mythical “Carnival of Light” gets released one day.