Opinion Now, like then: Listening to the last Beatles song

Whether or not the last two Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, should have gone ahead, without explicit consent from their late bandmates, John Lennon and George Harrison, to release a brand new song as the coda to their collective legacy may now be a moot question. The track in question, ‘Now and Then’, is well on its way to becoming a chart-topper, having been embraced by fans, along with a music video, directed by filmmaker Peter Jackson and a mini-documentary on the making of the new single. There’s no denying it — the last Beatles song is a hit.

One might wonder, though, where exactly the track fits into the Beatles’ vast and hugely influential body of work. Is it a mere commercial project, a venture designed to cash in on the most storied names in pop music? Is it an attempt to give the Beatles the end that they deserved, but never got? Perhaps McCartney and Starr, both over 80, are trying to ensure that the Beatles stay relevant, six decades after this particular foursome came together to make music history.

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‘Now and Then’ is all of this but also something more. It is an offering — from Paul and Ringo to John and George, certainly, but also to their fans, old and new. The new song may not become a mainstay of many Beatles playlists, being a lovely, wispy morsel rather than one of the tight, perfect compositions that the band produced at its peak, like ‘A Day in the Life’ or ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. But in its simple invocation of love, friendship and regret, effortless harmonising of voices — one of them recorded in 1977 — and sampling from favourites like ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ and ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is a reminder of why the world fell in love four mop-topped boys from Liverpool.