The Beatles have topped the UK singles chart – 54 years after their last Number One.
Now And Then – a song based on a John Lennon demo from the late 1970s – was completed earlier this year by the two surviving members of the group and with the help of AI technology to restore Lennon’s vocals.
It has reached the summit after being released just eight days ago.
The Liverpool legends last reached Number One with The Ballad of John and Yoko in 1969.
No other act in UK music history has had such a long gap between two chart-toppers.
The previous record was set by Kate Bush, who waited 44 years between her first Number One in 1978, Wuthering Heights, and her second in 2022, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God).
Sir Paul McCartney described the news as “mind-boggling”, telling the Official Charts Company: “It’s blown my socks off. It’s also a very emotional moment for me. I love it!”
Now And Then is The Beatles’ 18th number one hit, extending their lead as the group with the most chart-toppers in the UK, ahead of Westlife (14) and Take That (12).
They have also drawn level with Elvis Presley to share the record for the act with the greatest number of different songs to reach Number One in the UK.
Presley has topped the UK singles chart 21 times, but on three of these occasions the songs were re-releases of former Number Ones.
The history of Now And Then spans nearly five decades, beginning with the home recording made by John Lennon on a cassette in the late 1970s, a few years before he was shot dead in 1980.
Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono passed this tape to Sir Paul in the early 1990s, who then worked on the recording with fellow Beatles George Harrison and Sir Ringo Starr.
The trio quickly decided the poor sound quality of the tape, in particular the prominence of Lennon’s piano accompaniment, meant it was not worth developing any further.
It was not until 2022 that the right software was available to isolate Lennon’s voice from the original recording, which was then used as the basis for the current version of the song.
Along with Lennon’s 1970s vocal, some of the 1990s guitar work by George Harrison – who died in 2001 – has been retained, along with new contributions from Sir Paul and Sir Ringo.
The song has been masterminded by Sir Paul together with Giles Martin, son of the Beatles’ original producer George Martin, while film director Peter Jackson led the technological process to extract and clean up Lennon’s vocal.
The Beatles’ original run of Number Ones lasted just over six years, starting with From Me To You in April 1963 and ending with The Ballad of John and Yoko in June 1969.
Their 1960s chart-toppers included some of the world’s most well-known songs, such as She Loves You, Help!, Yellow Submarine, All You Need Is Love and Hey Jude.
The group missed out on a chance to score two further Number Ones in the 1990s, when Free As A Bird and Real Love stalled at Numbers Two and Four respectively.
Both of these songs, like Now And Then, were based on private recordings made by Lennon in the 1970s, except these were fully developed and completed in the mid-1990s by McCartney, Harrison and Starr.
Other artists with long spells between UK Number One singles include Tom Jones (42 years from Green, Green Grass of Home in 1967 to Islands In The Stream – with Rob Brydon, Robin Gibb and Ruth Jones – in 2009); Wham! (35 years between The Edge Of Heaven in 1986 and Last Christmas in 2021); and Cher (26 years between I Got You Babe – with Sonny Bono – in 1965 and The Shoop Shoop Song in 1991).
Elsewhere, last week’s Number One, Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version) by Taylor Swift, drops to number three, while Prada by Casso, Raye & D-Block Europe climbs one place to Number Two.
The UK singles and album charts are compiled by the Official Charts Company.
