For the first time since 1996, fans are able to let new music from the Beatles into their hearts.
On Thursday, what’s being called the final Beatles song, “Now and Then,” was released. The song marks the first previously unheard work featuring all four members of the legendary band — George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr — to come out in nearly three decades.
“Now and Then,” which was first announced in October, premiered on BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music on Thursday before arriving on streaming platforms. Hours before its release, a short film titled The Last Beatles Song dropped, featuring archival footage and the living members — McCartney, 81, and Starr, 83 — as well as Lennon and Yoko Ono’s son Sean Lennon, discussing the making of the song.
The track’s origins date back to the late 1970s, when Lennon recorded a demo with vocals and piano at his home in New York City. In 1994, his widow Ono gave the recording to Harrison, McCartney and Starr, and the trio recorded new parts and made a rough mix with help from producer and Electric Light Orchestra rocker Jeff Lynne.
Despite their efforts, Lennon’s vocals and piano couldn’t be separated due to a lack of advanced technology, which meant the project had to be shelved.
Harrison died in 2001 — but when filmmaker Peter Jackson made the 2021 docuseries Get Back, he managed to de-mix the film’s mono soundtrack, which meant the instruments and vocals were isolated. Eventually, surviving Beatles McCartney and Starr realized they could use this same technology to bring “Now and Then” to light.
With the work the Grammy winners put in to finishing the song, they ended up creating a stunning, tender ballad that finds the two vocalists’ voices uniting once again. After Lennon sings several verses and is eventually joined by McCartney, the song culminates in an extremely emotionally affective track, as they’re backed by grand orchestral strings and a guitar solo.
Featuring lyrics like, “I know it’s true / It’s all because of you / And if I make it through / It’s all because of you / And now and then / If we must start again / Well, we will know for sure / That I love you,” the song makes for an especially touching final release from the storied rock band.
In The Last Beatles Song, directed by Oliver Murray, the musicians open up about how moving it was to work on the track all these years later. “To still be working on Beatles music in 2023 — wow,” McCartney says at one point.
“All those memories come flooding back,” the vocalist and bass player reveals in the film. “My god, how lucky was I to have those men in my life and to work with those men so intimately and come up with such a body of music?”
Sean, 48, also speaks to how his father might have reacted to the release. “My dad would have loved that because he was never shy to experiment with recording technology,” he says in the doc.
“It was incredibly touching to hear them working together after all these years that Dad had been gone,” adds Sean.
In an interview with PEOPLE about how the final song came together, co-producer Giles Martin, son of the late Beatles producer Sir George Martin, opened up about the pressure to get the song right.
“It was Paul’s initiative to finish the song,” Giles said.
“We kept it the way they would have played,” the producer, 54, explained. “Here’s the thing about the Beatles — they had a heartbeat to them. There were four hearts that would beat as one in different rhythms, and it’s really important to retain that.”
He shared, “I do feel as though ‘Now and Then’ is a love letter to Paul written by John. I mean, I’ve never really asked Paul about it, and I’m not sure whether Paul would say, ‘Oh, that’s definitely it,’ because he wouldn’t want to second guess John. But that’s the sense I get. And I get the feeling that’s why Paul was so determined to finish it.”
On Friday, a music video directed by Jackson will be released at 10 a.m. ET.
Following the streaming release of “Now and Then,” which appears on a double single with a remastered version of their first-ever song “Love Me Do,” CD, vinyl and cassettes will become available on Friday. After Nov. 10, the song will also appear on newly remastered and expanded versions of their Red and Blue greatest hits albums.
