The aver­age music fan of the nine­teen-six­ties would sure­ly have found it hard to believe that the Rolling Stones would put out a new album in 2023, let alone an album includ­ing a per­for­mance by Paul McCart­ney. Here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, of course, we’ve long since known that the “rival­ry” between the young Stones and Bea­t­les was ginned up by music media. Still, not to be out­done more than half a cen­tu­ry after their breakup, the lat­ter have put out the new­ly com­plet­ed “Now and Then,” the last song fea­tur­ing all the Fab Four that will ever be released.

“Now and Then,” or at least its title, will ring a bell in the minds of seri­ous Bea­t­les enthu­si­asts. For decades, it has been known as one of sev­er­al promis­ing songs John Lennon record­ed with­out fin­ish­ing. Oth­ers include “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” which McCart­ney, George Har­ri­son, and Ringo Starr built upon in the stu­dio and released in the mid-nineties to accom­pa­ny the doc­u­men­tary The Bea­t­les Anthol­o­gy. At that time, Lennon’s home demo of “Now and Then” proved trick­i­er to work with: “the piano was a lit­tle hard to hear,” says McCart­ney in its short mak­ing-of film, “and in those days, of course, we did­n’t have the tech­nol­o­gy to do the sep­a­ra­tion” of one instru­ment or voice from the oth­ers.

Enter Peter Jack­son, a Beat­le­ma­ni­ac pos­sessed of uncom­mon resources and tech­no­log­i­cal know-how. It turns out that the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-based sys­tem devel­oped to sep­a­rate out the audio tracks for the Get Back doc­u­men­tary project, which he direct­ed, could also be used to sal­vage the mud­dy “Now and Then.” At last, McCart­ney says, “we could mix it and make a prop­er record of it,” a task that also includ­ed his lay­ing down a new bass part and Starr doing the same for the drums. Each ele­ment led to anoth­er: “I’d been vague­ly think­ing, ‘Strings might be a good thing.’ The Bea­t­les did lots of strings, you know?” This was a job for none oth­er than Giles Mar­tin, son of George. (See the mak­ing-of video below.)

As luck would have it, Har­ri­son, who died in 2001, also record­ed a gui­tar part back in 1995, which inspired McCart­ney to add a slide gui­tar solo in the same style. The New York Times Jon Par­e­les also notes “back­ing vocals from ‘Here, There and Every­where,’ ‘Eleanor Rig­by’ and ‘Because’: ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ in har­mo­ny.” The result is a gen­uine Bea­t­les song as well as a gen­uine Bea­t­les record­ing, not just in per­son­nel but also in spir­it. No soon­er did the band get famous, remem­ber, than they began incor­po­rat­ing into their work every advanced stu­dio device and tech­nique at their com­mand. If high tech­nol­o­gy was a vital fac­tor in their music then, it’s even more of one now.

Note: The offi­cial music video above was direct­ed by Peter Jack­son.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Mak­ing of the Last Bea­t­les Song, “Now and Then”: A Short Film

How Peter Jack­son Used Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Restore the Video & Audio Fea­tured in The Bea­t­les: Get Back

Watch Paul McCart­ney Com­pose The Bea­t­les Clas­sic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

A Sneak Peek of Peter Jackson’s New Bea­t­les Doc­u­men­tary Get Back: Watch the New Trail­er

Watch HD Ver­sions of The Bea­t­les’ Pio­neer­ing Music Videos: “Hey Jude,” “Pen­ny Lane,” “Rev­o­lu­tion” & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Late this sum­mer, the Talk­ing Heads released a remas­tered ver­sion of their con­cert film, Stop Mak­ing Sense. Although the film has already left some the­aters, the band has­n’t stopped pro­mot­ing it. Above, David Byrne, Jer­ry Har­ri­son, Chris Frantz and Tina Wey­mouth join Stephen Col­bert and rem­i­nisce about their adven­tures at RISD, CBG­Bs, and tour­ing with The Ramones. It’s great see­ing the band shar­ing a stage (and a laugh) again, even if there are no instru­ments in sight. Find Part 1 above, and parts 2 and 3 below…

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Mak­ing Sense Was Inspired by Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre

Watch David Byrne Prac­tice His Dance Moves for Stop Mak­ing Sense in New­ly Released Behind-the-Scenes Footage

The Talk­ing Heads’ First TV Appear­ance Was on Amer­i­can Band­stand, and It Was a Lit­tle Awk­ward (1979)

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

A Brief His­to­ry of Talk­ing Heads: How the Band Went from Scrap­py CBGB’s Punks to New Wave Super­stars

The build­ing that hous­es Dublin’s 3Olympia The­atre began life as Dan Lowrey’s Star of Erin Music Hall.

It has under­gone sev­er­al name changes over the course of its 145 years, and played host to dra­ma, opera, bal­let, films, ora­to­rio, pan­tomime, vari­ety shows, and world-famous pop­u­lar musi­cians like David Bowie, REM, Foo Fight­ers… and Dublin native Sinéad O’Connor, who arrived at the venue in 2011, uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly tot­ing her alu­minum foil-wrapped lunch.

Her fif­teen-year-old daugh­ter, Róisín Waters, sang back up.

Review­er Nico­la Byrne wrote in Gold­en Plec that “a sin­gle spot­light illu­mi­nat­ed O’Connor on the mid­dle of the stage, as she launched into “I Am Stretched On Your Grave,” a song she ‘Usu­al­ly ded­i­cates to any dead peo­ple that may be present:’”

With no instru­men­tal, all atten­tion was on that spot­light. If a pin had’ve been dropped in the Olympia, I would’ve known about it.

O’Connor ded­i­cat­ed that evening’s per­for­mance of “Noth­ing Com­pares To You” to her 7‑year-old son, Shane Lun­ny, who died by sui­cide in Jan­u­ary 2022, a year and a half before his moth­er also took her leave.

A few weeks ago, Nobu Adil­man and Dav­eed Gold­man, founders of Choir! Choir! Choir!, swung by 3Olympia The­atre, to lead a 1000-mem­ber strong spon­ta­neous choir of tick­et hold­ers in a mov­ing cov­er of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 You,” at the top of the page.

It was a mean­ing­ful way for fans to con­nect to an artist who spoke to them.

Choir! Choir! Choir! pre­vi­ous­ly paid trib­ute to David Bowie with “Space Odd­i­ty,” and Prince (com­pos­er of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 You)” with “When Doves Cry” not long after their deaths.

Pri­or to Dublin, Choir! Choir! Choir! hon­ored O’Connor with a sin­ga­long of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 You” at the Toron­to Opera House, in the town where their move­ment got its start.

Tick­et pur­chas­es ben­e­fit­ed CAMH: The Cen­tre for Addic­tion and Men­tal Health. Adil­man and Gold­man were joined onstage by the pro­duc­er of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U,” Chris Bir­kett, and Toron­to-based singer-song­writer Feist, whose first album pur­chase was O’Connor’s debut, The Lion and the Cobra.

“I remem­ber so clear­ly the first time I heard her at a friend’s house after school,” she told Index Mag­a­zine in 2005:

 She blew my mind. Her voice sound­ed like it was from anoth­er uni­verse. She rede­fined every­thing for me.

Turn­ing the clock back to 2016, we find Choir! Choir! Choir! par­tic­i­pants tack­ling “Noth­ing Com­pares 2” as a way of get­ting the jump on February’s most fraught hol­i­day:

Valentine’s Day kin­da sucks so last night, in antic­i­pa­tion, we cel­e­brat­ed EPIC HEARTBREAKS with the one and only Sinéad O’Con­nor. Props to Prince (yes, we know he wrote this amaz­ing tune!) for not tak­ing this video down in 7 hours and 15 days.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Sinéad O’Connor’s Raw Iso­lat­ed Vocals for “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U”

Sinéad O’Connor Makes Her First US Tele­vi­sion Appear­ance: Watch Her Sing “Mandin­ka” on Late Night with David Let­ter­man (1988)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.