NOT THE BEATLES BUT AN INCREDIBLE SIMULATION

[defrog]

By order of bedsitter23 , my hot take on the new Beatles track.

Meh.

To elaborate: As an audio production guy, I do find it interesting how they used AI to clean up the audio quality of the demo. And as a final product, it’s put together well.

On the other hand, the whole thing comes across to me as a Beatles assembly kit. If you take a cleaned-up Lennon demo of an incomplete song idea, add some verses by McCartney, have Ringo and George Harrison’s son do a couple of tracks, and xenochronize some old George guitar work onto it, is it really a Beatles song?

Now, I know that lots of songs these days are completed by swapping tracks by email, etc, and bands have been recording that way for decades, where, say, the guitarist or singer will dub their parts when the rest of the band isn’t there. And of course there’s The White Album, which famously has all four Beatles on only half the tracks.

So I guess we could say “Now and Then” is kind of like that.

Even so, when I listen to the song, I don’t really hear The Beatles. I hear a Lennon solo project.

I have every album the Beatles ever recorded, and I associate them with a very specific music approach and sound. And in my opinion, “Now and Then” doesn’t slot seamlessly into that in the same way that, say, “Real Love” and “Free As A Bird” did (more or less).

I suppose I get all the fuss about it, and why people like it – especially when you watch the Peter Jackson video.

Watch on YouTube

And I’ll admit it’s fun to think about “if this Beatles had kept going, what kind of music would they be making today, and would it be as good as their classic stuff?” And I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to point at the Rolling Stones and say, “Well, there’s your answer.” Different band, different music approach, different personalities, etc.

Also, we’ve seen the musical directions the individual Beatles took, and I don’t know if it’s fair to say that The Beatles as a band would have eventually produced the songs on Band On The Run, Double Fantasy, Cloud Nine etc and so on. Would they sound like they do on “Now and Then”? Maybe? I don’t know.

All I can really say is that, at the end of the day, “Now and Then” is one of those songs that make people like me say, “I liked their classic period better.”

Get back,

This is dF