The Beatles Make History with First Grammy for AI-Assisted Song "Now and Then"

Beatles Nab First Grammy for an AI-Assisted Song

Samantha Kelly is a freelance writer with a focus on consumer technology, AI, social media, Big Tech, emerging trends and how they impact our everyday lives. Her work has been featured on CNN, NBC, NPR, the BBC, Mashable and more. The Beatles won a Grammy on Sunday night, nearly 55 years after the famed band broke up, thanks to a little help from artificial intelligence. The band's song Now and Then, released in November 2023, made history for being the first AI-assisted track to take home a Grammy. The song, which won the Best Rock Performance award, beat out Pearl Jam, St. Vincent, The Black Keys and Idles. "Now and Then" was also nominated for Record of the Year at the Grammys but lost to Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us." The song features a previously unreleased recording of the late John Lennon singing and playing piano. Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, shared the recording with the rest of the Beatles after his death. Using advanced machine-learning software, engineers were able to isolate Lennon's voice from the piano track. Over the years, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the late George Harrison worked on the song, eventually adding their parts to create a new Beatles song featuring all four band members. Ahead of the song's release, McCartney tweeted: "... Nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It's all real and we all play on it. We cleaned up some existing recordings - a process which has gone on for years." Although AI was used in the production, it fits within the Grammy guidelines, which state that "only human creators are eligible" and that work featuring "elements of AI material" is allowed in certain categories. The win comes at a time when the music industry grapples with defining the appropriate use of AI and how it may impact creativity and authenticity in music production. The recognition also highlights how a song with AI assistance can drive innovation and creative expression while honoring the legacy of artists. AI is increasingly being used in the music industry, though not everyone supports its usage. A 12-minute short film about "Now and Then" follows McCartney, Star, and Harrison as they reunited in 1994 to work on the track. But after Harrison's death in 2001, the song was largely untouched until 2022. Lennon's son Sean said in the film he was moved by the process that made his father's voice part of a new Beatles song. "My dad would have loved that because he was never shy to experiment with recording technology," Sean Lennon said. "I think it's really beautiful."

The Beatles won a Grammy for a song they wrote 50 years ago

Thanks to AI and machine learning helping them release it in late 2023. Despite the fact that The Beatles split up over 50 years ago and the fact that they haven't written a new song since then, the band still managed to win a Grammy at the recent award show over the weekend. The band was nominated in a few categories for its recent release of the song Now and Then, which was written half a century ago but was never released due to the vocals and piano audio from John Lennon being on the same track and being impossible to separate. However, AI technology and machine learning managed to do it all the same, and in late 2023, the song (which incorporated a guitar track recorded in 1994) was released to the public. It was this song that landed a couple of Grammy nominations in late 2024, including Best Rock Performance and even Record of the Year. It actually won the former, beating out The Black Keys' Beautiful People (Stay High), Green Day's The American Dream is Killing Me, IDLES' Gift Horse, Pearl Jam's Dark Matter, and St. Vincent's Broken Man. As for the latter category, it lost to Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us.

The Beatles win big at Grammys more than five decades after their split. How it happened?

Even in 2025, The Beatles continue to prove that their music is timeless. More than half a century after their breakup, the legendary band took home their eighth Grammy on Sunday for Best Rock Performance, thanks to their final song, "Now and Then." The track, finished and released last year by surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, marks the first time the Fab Four have won a Grammy since 1997. What makes this win even more extraordinary is that it comes 55 years after the band officially called it quits in 1970. The award is not just a testament to their legacy but a moment of history -- The Beatles, long after their last studio album, remain a force in modern music. "Now and Then" is no ordinary Beatles song. Originally written and recorded as a demo by John Lennon in 1970, the track remained unfinished for decades. But with the help of artificial intelligence, McCartney and Starr were able to isolate and enhance Lennon's original vocals, allowing them to complete what McCartney calls "the last Beatles song." The track also features guitar recordings from the late George Harrison, made during the 1990s, making it a true Beatles collaboration across time. Lennon's son, Sean Ono Lennon, accepted the award at the Grammys Premiere Ceremony, a pre-show event where winners are announced before the main telecast. "The Beatles have done such incredible work, and they're still in the culture," he said in his speech. "As far as I'm concerned, it's the greatest band of all time. We need this music in this world. We need peace and love, and we need the music of the '60s to stay alive." The Beatles first took the Grammys by storm back in 1965, when they won Best New Artist and Best Vocal Performance by a Group for "A Hard Day's Night." Over the years, they picked up major wins, including Album of the Year for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1968. In 1997, they were honored again for their "Free As a Bird" project and their long-form music documentary, The Beatles Anthology. Now, nearly three decades after their last Grammy, the Fab Four have once again been recognized -- this time in an era where artificial intelligence is shaping the future of music. Though the song won Best Rock Performance, it fell short in the Record of the Year category, which went to Kendrick Lamar's chart-topping hit "Not Like Us". Still, the fact that The Beatles were even in the running for one of the night's biggest awards -- against artists from a generation that grew up long after their peak -- speaks volumes. Their music continues to resonate, evolve, and inspire, proving that even time cannot silence the greatest band in history.

The Beatles Win First Grammy Awarded to AI-Augmented Song - Decrypt

AI-infused art just notched a major victory in its quest for legitimacy: a Grammy. On Sunday night, "Now and Then" -- a previously unreleased Beatles' song finished decades after its inception with the aid of artificial intelligence -- won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance. The occasion marks the first time a song knowingly created with AI has ever earned an award from America's powerful Recording Academy. Beatles singer John Lennon first recorded a demo of "Now and Then" in 1978. After Lennon's assassination in 1980, his surviving bandmates attempted to push the song forward, but struggled to isolate and tweak Lennon's vocals on the late musician's initial recordings. Decades later, AI provided the solution -- allowing The Beatles to clean up Lennon's tracks and deliver a high-quality final product. In November 2023, the single, marketed as The Beatles' final song, finally got its long-overdue release. To be clear, the technology relied on to finish "Now and Then" is not the type of generative AI that has allowed users, in recent years, to create totally synthetic recordings that mimic an artist's voice and style. The Beatles have insisted that AI only helped sharpen the sound quality on Lennon's pre-existing solo recordings. Nonetheless, the embrace of "Now and Then" by the Recording Academy marks a substantial milestone in an entertainment industry where any association with the term "AI" can immediately spell controversy. Two films nominated for Best Picture Oscars this year, The Brutalist and Emilia Perez, have faced backlash for using AI to augment actors' foreign language skills and vocal ranges, respectively. "Now and Then" may have proved to be the perfect vehicle for AI innovation, given its connection to one of the most established and beloved bands of all time, and the irresistible narrative tied to its creation -- allowing The Beatles to "reassemble" one last time despite the passing of two members. It remains to be seen whether the generosity afforded "Now and Then" will extend to more experimental offerings. Around the same time as the song's release, an anonymous music producer released a smash-hit, completely AI-generated song that imagined a lively collaboration between Drake and The Weeknd. At first, the Recording Academy's CEO explicitly backed the song, "Heart On My Sleeve," clarifying it was "absolutely eligible" for Grammy consideration. After furious backlash from record labels claiming copyright infringement, however, the Academy reversed its opinion, locking the song and its creator out of Grammy eligibility.

The Beatles' 'Now and Then' Was Made With AI (and That's Okay)

I happened to catch some of the Grammy Awards last night, and while pop, rap, and country definitely took center stage, it was the Best Rock Performance category that most caught my attention. The award went to The Beatles for their song "Now and Then," which is a confusing sentence in 2025. You might be aware The Beatles operated largely in the 1960s, not the 2020s, and seeing as only half the group is still alive, winning a Grammy for a new song might sound a bit strange. Nevertheless, the song is new -- at least, as new as a Beatles song can be. The track dropped towards the end of 2023, and is built from a demo John Lennon recorded shortly before his death. In the '90s, the living three Beatles members (Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison) attempted to finish the song, but never completed it, as the original audio quality was too poor. Modern technology, however, made it possible to create the product you hear today. I love The Beatles, but the song itself isn't really what I paid attention to. (I didn't really give it much thought until Sunday.) Instead, an announcer made it clear the song was produced with AI, a statement that, in 2025, elicits anything from an eye roll to a heavy sigh from this tech editor. AI-generated music is very much a reality today. While there are some convincing results from these AI-generated tools, there are plenty of tells to look out for. The idea that The Beatles would put out a song with some level of AI generation didn't sit well with me, and I bet many others out there. However, it's important to note the difference between AI-generated, and AI-produced. They sound the same, but they're not. I want to be clear: "Now and Then" is not an AI-generated song: No one is tapping AI to recreate the voice of John Lennon to make another award-winning song. AI doesn't just mean the artificially generated content we're all accustomed to. While it feels like AI took over our lives with the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022, companies have embedded the tech in our products and services for a lot longer than that. AI is, perhaps, a bit of a misnomer. In this context, machine learning is a bit more accurate. Machine learning is, very simply, when a program is able to adapt and grow based on the data it experiences -- similar to how our minds work. You feed the program training data, and it adjusts its assumptions and outputs accordingly. While the actual process is much more complicated than this, machine learning empowers programs to do some great things. One of those things is audio track separation: Part of the reason the "Now and Then" project was shelved was because they couldn't properly mix the song, since Lennon's original recording was so rough. But using an audio editing tool powered with machine learning, producers were able to separate Lennon's vocals from the piano. Neither the piano nor the vocals were generated with AI -- rather, the tool was able to break these tracks apart, so producers, along with the two living Beatles, could build upon them to record, mix, and ship a completed song. McCartney posted as much on X the summer before releasing the song: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. For many reasons, I'm happy this "AI Beatles song" didn't artificially bring back John Lennon. It's genuinely sweet to have a song Lennon started decades ago, properly finished by his former bandmates, with Lennon's son accepting the award on the band's behalf. The music video, on the other hand, definitely pushes things a bit further, juxtaposing archival footage of deceased Beatles members John Lennon and George Harrison alongside current footage of McCartney and Starr. (It was produced by Peter Jackson, who both produced Now and Then, as well as the 2021 Beatles documentary Get Back.) Still, it's more weird than anything else, and certainly isn't a product purporting to represent reality -- as opposed to much of the AI-generated content you encounter in the wild.

The Beatles won a Grammy last night, thanks to AI | TechCrunch

The Beatles' AI-assisted track "Now and Then" won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance on Sunday night, marking the first time that a song of its kind has taken home the award. No, Paul McCartney did not use AI to create some creepy LennonGPT bot. Instead, he used noise reduction systems to clean up a decades-old, low quality piano demo from his late bandmate. This technology is similar to what video call providers like Zoom, FaceTime, and Google Meet use to block out unwanted background noise and deliver a clearer sound. The surviving Beatles first tried to fix up on Lennon's demo in the 90s, but the technology available at the time couldn't quite extract Lennon's muffled vocals. In 2022, after learning how the filmmakers behind archival Beatles documentary "Get Back" were using new audio isolation techniques to make poorly recorded demos listenable, they revisited "Now and Then."

The Beatles Make Grammy Award History With AI: How Technology Helped Create Rock Band's Final Song - Paramount Glb (NASDAQ:PARA), Paramount Glb (NASDAQ:PARAA)

The winning song used AI to help restore an old demo of John Lennon's voice along with music from the other three Beatles members. The Beatles are one of the bestselling and most recognizable bands of all time. Over 60 years after their debut, The Beatles are still winning awards, and this time it's partially thanks to artificial intelligence. What Happened: In June 2023, surviving Beatles member Paul McCartney announced plans to make the last Beatles song ever, a track titled "Now and Then." The song was released in November 2023, featuring music from McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon, the four members of the band, as reported by The Verge. The track was created using a demo of Lennon's vocals from the late 1970s and music parts added by McCartney, Starr, and Harrison in the 1990s. The track was never released and thanks to the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the old demo was cleaned up and released as the band's last song. McCartney and Starr completed the song in 2021 with the help of filmmaker Peter Jackson and machine-learning technology. McCartney went on to say that the AI tech used was different than what some people were reporting. "To be clear, nothing has been artificially or synthetically created. It's all real and we all play on it," McCartney said in 2023. "We cleaned up some existing recordings - a process which has gone on for years." "Now and Then" hit number one on several country charts after its release. On Sunday, The Beatles track took home the honor of Best Rock Performance at the 67th Grammy Awards, which aired on CBS and streamed on Paramount+, units of Paramount Global PARA PARAA. Read Also: The Beatles Cinematic Universe: How Fab Four Members Will Come Together For Director Sam Mendes On The Big Screen Why It's Important: With Sunday night's win, The Beatles have now won eight Grammy Awards from 25 nominations as a group. The track is believed to be the first to use AI and win a Grammy Award. The band won their first awards in 1964, winning Best New Artist and Best Performance by a Vocal Group for "A Hard Day's Night." "Now and Then" beat out Green Day, Pearl Jam, The Black Keys, Idles and St. Vincent for Best Rock Performance. The song was also nominated for Record of the Year, which it lost to Kendrick Lamar ("Not Like Us"), who won five awards and led the way in wins Sunday. Lennon's son Sean Lennon accepted the Grammy Award on behalf of the band. "Play The Beatles music to your kids. I feel like the world can't afford to forget about people like The Beatles," Lennon said while accepting the award. "We need this music in the world. We need peace and love. We need the magic of the Sixties to stay alive." Along with The Beatles winning a Grammy Award, The Rolling Stones, another iconic rock band from the same era, took home Best Rock Album. Read Next: Peter Jackson On Directing Beatles' 'Now And Then' Video: 'Sheer Terror At The Thought Of Letting Everyone Down' Photo: Shutterstock PARAParamount Global$10.71-1.52%WatchlistOverviewPARAAParamount Global$22.50-1.38%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs