I grew up listening to the Beatles, thanks mostly to my dad, although I had surpassed him in my degree of fandom by the time I entered junior high school. Convinced that I was born in the wrong time, I wore vintage bellbottoms and tie-dyed shirts, along with my best friend Fahmina (we're pictured below, meeting George Harrison's sister, Louise, in a mall).
An unfortunate part of being a hardcore Beatles fan in the '90s is that I knew that there would never be another Beatles song. The catalog was deep, but it was complete. Until it wasn't. In November of 1995, a three-part documentary called The Beatles Anthology was released on ABC (who temporarily rebranded itself A-Beatles-C for the event). The culmination of the documentary was the release of two new Beatles songs: "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love." This was a feat made possible with cutting-edge music technology, combining demo tapes that John Lennon had recorded in the 1970s (provided by his widow, Yoko Ono) with newly-recorded material by the three remaining Beatles. It was one of the greatest events of my life up to that point.
It didn't occur to me at the time, but thinking back on the new tracks from the Anthology, it seems obvious now that they were met with some criticism by both fans and the press. Jon Pareles wrote about nostalgia and anxiety in his New York Times review of "Free as a Bird": "The song helps listeners mourn Lennon, and some will no doubt relive the fervent anticipation for new Beatles' songs in the mid-1960's. But the posthumous electronic collaboration, an ornate edifice built on a shard of a dead man's music, can't help sounding creepy." (Starr, McCartney, Harrison, and producer George Martin are shown below in 1995.)
I was 13 years old when "Free as a Bird" came out; the fans who were 13 in 1965 would have been 43. Well, the Beatles are releasing another new song this week, and guess who's in her 40s now? The new song, "Now and Then," was made possible with artificial intelligence. Of course, this the part that inspires panic today - AI creates new Beatles tune! Well, sort of. When the Anthology was being made, this song was being considered as a new release along with "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love." Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr even went as far as to record some new parts before it was abandoned, due to the quality of Lennon's original tape. It just wasn't possible to isolate his voice and piano parts at the time - this is where the artificial intelligence comes in: we can do it now. To be clear, AI didn't write the song, although it might have been able to. AI didn't recreate John Lennon's voice or George Harrison's (who died in 2001) guitar playing, although it probably could have done that, too. I wonder if I'm going to hear any panic about the AI that was used here, and whether or not explaining what exactly was done would help quell that panic. It seems like it elicits panic when it appears as though artificial intelligence is just that, intelligent. (Although it isn't, of course; it's an amalgam of work done by humans. It's just fast at compiling information.)
And of course, AI isn't what Pareles was reacting to when he called "Free as a Bird" creepy. He was referring to what I'm calling necromusica, or, playing duets with dead people. This has been possible for many years now, and a couple of famous instances were mentioned in Pat Metheny's infamous rant against Kenny G. Metheny cites Natalie Cole's duet with her deceased father, calling it "weird" (I disagree; I think the familial connection here makes it touching) and deems Tony Bennett's duet with Billie Holiday (he was alive at the time; she wasn't) "bizarre." He seems to give these performances a pass because of the relationship involved with the performers of the first duet and the similar "level of artistic accomplishment" by the artists in the second. Then he proceeds to rake Kenny G. through the coals for imposing himself on a Louis Armstrong track. Metheny is critical of Kenny G.'s playing, but he also seems to imply an objection based on moral grounds - he uses phrases like "bad taste," "disrespectful," "defile," "hallowed ground" (and many more) to describe his displeasure at this version of "What a Wonderful World."
I can't help but wonder what that Pat Metheny would think about the Anthology tracks, and about "Now and Then." In my view, not only were the Beatles on the same "level of artistic accomplishment" (literally, they were in the same band - this is, in fact, autonecromusica), but I would argue that they pass Metheny's familial relationship test, as well. If you've spent even a fraction of the time that I have listening to and reading interviews with the Fab Four, they talk about their time as a band as a relationship with each other. Of course, there isn't really an answer to the "is this ok?" question, or the "when is this ok?" question. The point is that it's happening, and AI is making it happen in new ways that might not have been possible previously.
When I was 13, I felt palpable nostalgia for a time that I never knew, as I struggled to feel that there was a place for me in my existent world. As a middle aged person, my nostalgia now is for the time that was actually happening - the '90s, during my youth. And the cycle continues, of course, as I see teenagers today doing with '90s culture what I did with '60s culture. Necromusica is a particular way that musicians and composers can engage with both their own sense of nostalgia, as well as that of listeners. The concept isn't limited to our time with recording technology, either. A colleague brought up Charles Gounod's "Ave Maria" - an 1853 necromusical duet with J. S. Bach, who had been dead for over a hundred years. And there are a thousand more examples. Interacting with our past is certainly a part of what makes us creators, but also a part of what makes us human.
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