The Beatles and the Past That Never Ends

The Beatles, photographed at the peak of their star power

When the surviving Beatles released two new songs in 1995, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” built around John Lennon’s home demos, I was giddy. I bought the CDs promptly, and listened to them repeatedly, with the devotion a better-connected audiophile might’ve dedicated to finding a lost 78 by Billie Holliday. I mean, okay, the Beatles were never going to tour again, and these two tracks were in-studio novelties. But c’mon, man, it was the Beatles!

This week, a third and final post-breakup track dropped, “Now and Then.” This time, instead of whirling anticipation, I felt a gut-clench of dread. The landscape has changed since 1995. Just as important, though, I have changed. Yet despite my trepidation, I listened when the track dropped. Of course I did; millions of people worldwide listed simultaneously. And while the overall response has been positive, I heard the new track and felt… nothing.

“Now and Then” reads like a sweeping homage to everything the Beatles recorded post-Sgt. Pepper. The combination of psychedelic guitars, lush strings, and tight vocal harmonies, all reflect the forces driving the Beatles’ late-stage sound. It’s a perfect Beatles encomium—too perfect. The track sounds like something a particularly skillful Beatles tribute band might’ve composed after too many all-night benders, striving to unlock that elusive Lennon-McCartney magic.

I’ve written before about my efforts to become a baby boomer. I styled myself according to hippie peacenik conventions, listened to boomer rock, and told anyone listening how much I disdained the sounds of my generation. I imagined myself quite the activist, fighting the battles of 1968 with committed aplomb. The battles of my generation? Meh. By committing myself to the causes and culture of my parents’ youth, I convinced myself of my innate goodness.

Classic rock radio was the mass-media manifestation of this commitment. By hearing the great songs and great songwriters of the 1960s and 1970s repeated constantly, with new music never treading upon my consciousness, I convinced myself that I was a branded soldier for civil rights. “Branded” turns out to have been right, too. Only years later would I realize how thoroughly classic rock radio curated a well-scrubbed, anodyne version of that generation.

America has over 2,000 “classic rock,” “classic hits,” and “oldies” stations. Together, that’s more than any format except country music, and all three formats play the Beatles at least occasionally. Both separately and together, the Beatles continue to steer the sounds of Anglophonic pop culture, their repertoire ransacked by countless rock and pop bands, their style mimicked by acts eager to recapture their mojo. All these acts sound distressingly the same.

Since radio ownership regulations came down following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, radio has become monolithic. Three conglomerates control almost eighty percent of America’s radio broadcasting: iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel), Audacy, and NBC. Likewise, three conglomerates dominate the recording industry, and three conglomerates control music publishing. These conglomerates almost don’t matter, though, since half of all music gets heard through one outlet: Spotify.

In other words, the music industry has become less diverse, more concentrated, and less receptive to public taste since the Beatles’ last new recordings in 1995. While the occasional Justin Bieber squeaks through, recording home cover versions for YouTube, most hitmakers’ careers are tightly controlled. Olivia Rodrigo and Selena Gomez, who appeared to emerge from nowhere, were cultivated by Disney for years before their breakthroughs.

In past generations, most music executives were musicians. George Martin, who produced every Beatles recording except the final three, was a jazz keyboardist who released several sides which went nowhere. Nowadays, music executives are bean counters with MBAs, monumentally risk-averse and beholden to what’s worked before. Therefore, today’s new releases persistently sound identical. New rock music is risky; let listeners re-hear the same “classics” their parents and grandparents loved.

From this milieu emerges a Beatles recording that sounds like a perfect amalgamation of everything the Fab Four recorded after 1966. And yes, it’s indeed perfect. It’s exactly what the band created in their notorious overnight sessions after they’d stopped touring and began investing full-time in their passion projects. Beatles fans like me should gobble it up; most will.

Yet I feel cold. George Harrison died twenty-two years ago, and John Lennon has been dead longer than he was alive, but their bandmates, and their label, won’t let them rest. The demand to produce a capstone song, which nobody knew was missing, sixty years later, has resulted in a paint-by-numbers product. Some things are just supposed to end.