🎧Downbeat.fm Vol. 4 Track 10

Today is an historic day - we’re getting the first Beatles song in almost 30 years was released. You can listen to it on Apple Music, or Spotify, or below on Youtube.

Paul, George, and Ringo tried to rework of “Now and Then”, a demo recorded by John in his New York Apartment before his death in 1980, along side “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” in the mid-90s during the Anthology event but were unable to due to the recording quality of the demo and the technology of that time.

During the making of the Get Back documentary, Peter Jackson and his teams were able to isolate voices and tracks on some demoes, and was asked to try to do that for “Now and Then".

The Beatles are a huge part of my musical journey. Their music was played often in our house. Some of my first CDs were Beatles CDs. I remember opening up Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band on Christmas morning after I got my first CD player for my birthday a few months prior. I have some of my parent’s Beatles records from when they were kids in my own record collection.

The Anthology documentary was a huge deal in our house. I was 14 or so and can still remember sitting in our living room watching it and listening to those two new songs, knowing they were something special but not really understanding why.

I’ve listened to the song a bunch already this morning, and enjoy it a lot. It very much sounds like a post-Beatles John song, but that in and of itself is a blessing.

You can watch the short film about how they made the song here.

October’s Playlist

This month’s playlist features Foxing, All Dogs, Pile, Tanya Davis, Slothrust, Oso Oso, Michael Cera Palin, and more!

Listen to this month’s playlist on

Quick Listening and Other Links

Spotify is going to pay even less to less-popular artists. You know, the people who need the money.

The video below is a recording of Johnny Cash singing Blank Space by Taylor Swift. Except, Taylor Swift wrote that song 20 year after Johnny Cash died. It’s an AI rendering of his voice. It really sounds amazing - I had to look up the song to be sure it wasn’t written years ago and Johnny covered it for real.

It sounds amazing, but I have so many issues with this from an ethical standpoint, and how it can be misused by record companies, movie and TV studios, or even bad actors on a geopolitical scale.

@thereiruineditForgive me, Mr. Cash. #blankspace #johnnycash #taylorswift #ai

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The AV Club compiled a list of the “50 greatest music videos of all time.” It’s a good list of great videos, but with any list, it’s debatable in many places and probably missing some key entries. Including some videos that I talked about before.

Sticking with lists, here’s one from Rolling Stone with the “250 greatest guitarists of all time.” It’s a long list of a lot of names that you may not know but would possibly recognize some of their songs. Some artists on this list that have been featured on a Downbeat.fm playlist include Lindsay Jordan (Snail Mail), Lucy Dacus, Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney), Johnny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien (Radiohead), and probably a few more that I missed. You won’t be too surprised with the top 50 for the most part, and definitely won’t be surprised with the top 10.

Dave Grohl joined Boygenius on stage to play drums on Satanist on Halloween.