The Beatles are about to release a new single with John Lennon’s vocals.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Even though they broke up 50 years ago, we’ve said a physical goodbye to John Lennon when he was murdered in 1980 and then to George Harrison when he died of cancer in 2001 - we have new music on the horizon.

Thanks to AI.

The song is called “Now and Then” - based on a 1970s demo recording by John Lennon and completed last year by Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr - the surviving band mates. They added electric and acoustic guitar parts recorded by Harrison in 1995 before his death.

There was an attempt at creating the song many years ago, but it was abandoned due to the quality of Lennon’s vocals. But technology has now fixed that.

In a press release, the surviving Beatles said completing the song had been a surreal experience.

"There it was, John's voice, crystal clear," said Sir Paul. "It's quite emotional. And we all play on it; it's a genuine Beatles recording. In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music and about to release a new song the public hasn't heard, I think it's an exciting thing."

If you think this is weird science, I draw your attention to a video I’ve played in quite a few of my keynotes and workshops containing the ‘vocals’ of Johnny Cash.

The music industry has been getting weirder and weirder all year and this is just a part of it.

But this got me thinking about audio - we’ve done quite a bit this year on text-to-video and text-to-image, but so far, not too much on text-to-audio.

Prompt/Tool of the Day

Feeling overwhelmed in the lead-up to Christmas? This one’s for you.

Today, I’m going to make a personal meditation similar to Headspace or Calm, starting with creating the words with ChatGPT and then generating the audio with a tool by Eleven Labs.

In a real estate context, you could use this tool for a property tour voice-over, making your website more accessible for the vision challenged, creating learning and training materials, onboarding, market update reels, translations, ebooks, podcasts, and more.

On a personal level, how cool would it be to create your kids a personalised bedtime story?

If you’re using an AI voice, here is a simple tutorial:

Other tools I mention that you might want to explore if you’re going to test out some of the other applications:

• Uberduck

• Hey Gen

• Descript

Happy Hunting 🚀