‘Biblical, celestial’ or ‘dreary ballad’? Mixed response to final Beatles song Now and Then

‘A loving but dreary attempt to recapture the magic’

The Telegraph said while people would have been excited at the potential of a new Beatles song being released within their lifetimes, it would change once they actually heard it.

“Now and Then is a slip of a dreary ballad, only elevated by the quality of the singing and playing, and the spooky notion that it is the work of the greatest group in pop history, reunited across death’s divide.”

“But just as the band find a sensual groove, the McCartney-led chorus arrives as an anticlimactic plod, dropping where the song needs to lift, awkwardly repurposing some snatches of unfinished Lennon phrases into a form that doesn’t quite fit the song’s plaintive mood.

“The chords aren’t interesting, and harmonies pasted in from old Beatle recordings (Here There and Everywhere, Eleanor Rigby and Because) don’t really cut through as they should.“

“And where is George Harrison in all of this? On acoustic guitar, apparently, and a very un-Beatley thin and incongruously funky electric rhythm part, recorded in 1995.”

‘It certainly sounds like a rough and incomplete sketch of a song reassembled’

Variety argued while the song doesn’t measure up to the band’s work when they were together, fans shouldn’t expect it to.

“With all the hoopla around Now and Then – which has been officially billed as ‘The Last Beatles Song’ and erroneously described as the legendary group’s ‘first new song in 50 years’ – some reality-checking is in order.”

“Yes, it is a ‘new’ Beatles song in that all four members, including the late John Lennon and George Harrison, play and sing on a previously unreleased composition.”

“But it is not some long-lost Abbey Road outtake (those were all exhumed long ago), and in reality even Lennon’s part was recorded and presumably written many years after the Beatles broke up.

“So that’s the how and why; the real – unfair – question is whether the song comes close to measuring up to the Beatles or their collective solo works’ towering legacy. Of course it doesn’t, but it’s still an unexpected pleasure that marks the completion of the group’s last bit of unfinished business.”

A highly artificed song, but the emotions it taps into are real.

The Financial Times labelled the track as imagining an alternative future for the band.

“It resembles a big-budget version of a minor-key curio that they might have come up with had they not split up.

“McCartney’s bass and Ringo Starr’s drums give the flimsy song a new solidity.

“Harrison is posthumously present with a guitar part from the failed 1990s studio sessions. Lennon’s warble has been extracted and foregrounded by music-processing software, although it’s still rather thin.

“He’s backed by sumptuous vocal harmonies. A big string arrangement by Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin, adds a Beatlesy flavour, and also some Hollywood emotional heft.

“With McCartney and Starr both in their eighties, the time when the world ceases to contain a living Beatle is approaching. This inexorable fact separates Now and Then from its fellow bastardised oddities, Free as a Bird and Real Love. It’s a highly artificed song, but the emotions it taps into are real.”

John Lennon is in the room, bright, clear and miraculously alive

Now and Then invokes the feeling that John Lennon is alive and well, according to The Independent.

“If only Harrison could hear it now. With McCartney counting in his austere piano and Harrison’s acoustic backing from 1995, there is a stately, reflective tone to this mid-paced, gently psychedelic ballad.

“John is here in the room, bright and clear and miraculously alive. After Lennon had sounded so muffled and urn-interred on Anthology singles Free as a Bird and Real Love, here is an emotional resurrection treated with the respect and reverence it deserves.

“McCartney gives Lennon’s vocals space and prominence, blending his own voice sensitively into that wondrous brotherly harmony we thought we’d never hear afresh again.

“To compare something elaborately reconstructed from an immutable blueprint to the sheer magnificence of the best pop group ever firing off in their prime would be wrong-headed in the extreme.

“Of course, without the full band experimenting and innovating in a room together, Now and Then is no A Day in the Life, Strawberry Fields Forever or Tomorrow Never Knows. But that’s not its point.”

A poignant act of closure

The Guardian labelled the song a “poignant act of closure” for the biggest band in history.

“Listening to Now and Then, it’s hard to see what Harrison’s objection was in purely musical terms. A moody, reflective piano ballad, it’s clearly never going to supplant Strawberry Fields Forever or A Day in the Life in the affections of Beatles fans, but it’s a better song than Free as a Bird or Real Love.”

“And posthumously reworked as a Beatles track, it definitely packs a greater emotional punch. If you want to be moved, the lyrics provide ample space in which do so.“

“There’s something similarly moving about the sound of a very Harrison-esque slide guitar solo being played by McCartney, who apparently balked at Harrison’s slide guitar additions to the mid-90s sessions as too reminiscent of his 1971 solo hit My Sweet Lord.“