Sitting down in my hotel room on 3rd November to get first sight of the new music video for The Beatles last song, I had a vision already of what it could be.

I have read the Peter Jackson interviews, heard his approach to it and knew that not only did he have the Anthology session footage but also an unseen clip courtesy of Pete Best, and my mind had put together a chronological journey through Beatledom.

A then and now if you will.

What we got was much different, experimental in many ways, a mix of archive footage and CGI that for me felt at odds with the wistful longing on the song itself.

I get that something too maudlin might have been off putting and we all know that the Beatles liked to have fun, but the scenes where the young John and George are side by side with old Paul and Ringo in a technicolour CGI collage just didn’t work for me. With the AI ethics battle rageing in the background, the inauthenticity of these scenes, seem to only add fuel to that particular fire.

It’s not that the concept isn’t good, the older Beatles playing alongside their younger selves, it’s just that the production value is lacking – Paul filming his parts on an ipad it has since been revealed.

Cast your minds back to the Easter egg laden, Free as a Bird video, that was chock full of nostalgia and style, it felt like a tribute not only to the band but the fans as well, so dense with references that is demanded repeat viewings, and still does. It also felt real, rooted in the history of the band and not manufactured in that sense.

This is not to say that there are not parts of the Now and Then video to be adored and admired here. The closing black and white segment where we are treated to the Pete Best footage and moving pictures, AI again, of the young Beatles as men and then boys, is a reminder of the journey they have been on.

It is that element,, along with the final bow and fade out, that perhaps show us what could have been, to borrow from the Ringo album of the same name, the sentimental journey the director might have taken us on.

Jackson will eternally have my respect for his recent role in the Beatle revival, Get Back is a towering achievement and his film work is always on point, but as a fan of Now and Then as a piece of music, I can’t be alone in thinking that the tone of this video seems at odds with the music itself.

It’s hard to write this because the tone of this blog is always intentionally geared towards the positive, but I feel one final walk through the Beatles history, would have been a better fit for the final Beatles track.

Overall, however, the experience of this last Beatles release has been a positive one. It has brought fans together, young and old and new and shown that, unlike the Beatles in the closing scenes of the video, the Fab Four will never really fade away.

The new video for Now and Then can be found in the official Beatles YouTube channel.