The Beatles have two Grammy nominations this year, but no, we didn't just accidentally time-warp to the 1960s. The Beatles' song “Now and Then,” released last year and refined using AI, is up for record of the year and best rock performance. So the Fab Four will be up against artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Lawn, and Beyoncé, setting the tone for a pretty bizarre Grammys moment.
It's been 50 years since the band broke up, but last year Paul McCartney decided to use AI to create the Beatles' last record. McCartney isn't using the technology to resurrect his late bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison with deepfakes. Instead, McCartney used one of John Lennon's 1978 demos and used AI to clean up the recording's poor sound quality.
McCartney drew inspiration from director Peter Jackson's 2021 documentary series The Beatles: Get Back, which was based on archival footage of the recording sessions for Let It Be. These 1969 recordings didn't sound very good, but the film's dialogue editor Emile de la Rey used AI to recognize each Beatle's voice and separate it from the background noise. This same technology helped producer Giles Martin create a new stereo mix for the Beatles' 1966 album “Revolver.”
This AI-based audio editing is similar to how video chat platforms like FaceTime, Google Meet, and Zoom remove background noise from calls. Machine learning models can be trained on specific things, such as a human voice on a video call or a particular type of guitar in a studio, and learn how to separate those sounds from the rest of the recording. You can learn.
Will fellow nominees like Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar be able to compete against the Beatles at the Grammys? Perhaps the real question is: Can the Beatles win on newness alone? Of all the songs nominated for Record of the Year, “Now and Then” has the least number of streams on Spotify at 78 million. If the Beatles are “more popular than Jesus,” then Charli XCX is probably more popular now, too.