When The Beatles released “Now and Then” in 2023, it felt less like a new single and more like a message from another lifetime — an unexpected bridge between past and present, between what was lost and what still lives on. Built from a fragile home demo recorded by John Lennon in the late 1970s, completed decades later by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and restored using cutting-edge audio technology, the song became something no one thought still possible: a final Beatles record, born from memory, love, and the unbreakable thread that tied four musicians together even after death.
The song begins with John’s voice — clear, aching, unmistakably vulnerable. Thanks to modern audio separation, his words rise through the speakers with the intimacy of someone singing from the next room:
“I know it’s true… it’s all because of you.”
It is haunting, not in darkness, but in tenderness. Hearing John again — not as history, but as presence — feels like time folding in on itself.
Paul’s contributions are woven with reverence. His bass lines move with the elegance of his 1960s work, his harmonies wrap gently around John’s melody, and his added lyrics complete the emotional picture without overshadowing the original. You can hear the weight behind his performance — the grief of losing John, the ache of unfinished conversations, the lifelong admiration, and the desire to honor a friend he never stopped loving.
Ringo’s drumming is subtle, steady, affectionate — not flashy, but grounded, the way only Ringo can be. His drum fills are like small nods of recognition, soft gestures that say: I’m here too, mate. Together, Paul and Ringo give John what he didn’t have when he sang the demo alone: the company of friends who never forgot him.
The string arrangement — written in the spirit of George Martin but guided by his son Giles Martin — carries the emotional lift of classic Beatles ballads like “Yesterday”, “Eleanor Rigby”, and “The Long and Winding Road.” It swells and sighs with both sorrow and beauty, echoing the band’s most orchestral moments while remaining gentle enough to preserve the intimacy of John’s original vocal.
Even George Harrison is present. Acoustic guitar parts he recorded during the abandoned 1995 sessions were carefully integrated into the final mix, allowing George’s warmth and phrasing to sit beside John’s voice one last time. In this way, “Now and Then” becomes more than a song — it becomes a reunion. A quiet one, a fragile one, but a reunion nonetheless.
The lyrics feel like they were meant for this moment all along:
💬 “Now and then, I miss you…”
It is impossible not to hear these words as a message between friends who were separated too soon. Between Paul and John. Between Ringo and George. Between the world and the band that changed everything.
The song grows into a gentle crescendo — harmonies blooming, strings rising, drums anchoring the rhythm — and for a moment, it feels as though the Beatles are all in the room together. Not young, not old — just present. Just together.
What makes “Now and Then” extraordinary is not the technology or the novelty of “the last Beatles song.”
It is its emotion.
Its humility.
The way it turns longing into gratitude, unfinished business into a soft, final embrace.
It is not a grand finale.
It is a quiet closing of a door that had been left slightly open for fifty years.
And when the final chord fades — gentle, luminous, lingering — we are left with a truth as simple as it is profound:
The Beatles never really ended.
They simply paused.
And with “Now and Then,”
they said goodbye the way they always should have —
together.