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The world will get one more "new" Beatles song.
Paul McCartney tells the BBC that it came about using Artificial Intelligence with help from director Peter Jackson and his team following their work on the 2021 Beatles documentary, Get Back.
While McCartney didn't say what the title of the song is, it's believed to be John Lennon's 1978 song, "Now and Then," which he, George and Ringo attempted to complete as the third "new" track for the Anthology series in 1995 and '96.
Yoko Ono had given McCartney the demo in 1994. It was one of several songs on a cassette labelled "For Paul" that Lennon recorded on a boombox in his New York apartment.
Jeff Lynne, who produced the two "new" songs they did release for that project, "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love," was able to somewhat clean up that demo, but it was never finished.
At that time, Lynne said, "The song had a chorus but is almost totally lacking in verses. We did the backing track, a rough go that we really didn't finish."
And McCartney later explained that it was a group decision to abandon it.
"It didn't have a very good title, it needed a bit of reworking, but it had a beautiful verse and it had John singing it. [But] George didn't like it. The Beatles being a democracy, we didn't do it."
But he added that it was always on the back of his mind to try and finish.
The track, an apologetic love song, surfaced in 2009 on a bootleg. It didn't contain the background noise, leading to speculation that it was not the same recording Yoko gave to Paul and that it may have been stolen from her apartment, along with other items, after John's death in 1980.
McCartney gave no specific date for the release, only to say it will be out this year.
Source: The Guardian and Premiere