Do you remember the last time the “last” Beatles’ song debuted? I’ve always imagined driving down the dragstrip on Aug. 15, 1965, and tuning the radio to find “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” But having been born half a century too late to join the Beatlemania insanity, I never in my sleepiest dreams conjured the fantasy of witnessing a new Beatles song. That was then. That past has vanished because whether you’re too young or too “old” to remember the disputed releases of 1970, history’s record has skipped in the best way. This is now.

The long and winding road to the Beatles’ final song has been a four-decade odyssey across generations of people, music and technology. “Now and Then” is lauded for its hallucination-inducing whirlwind of innovation and nostalgia, produced primarily by Paul McCartney, and impressively features new as well as archival contributions by all the Beatles members, in life and after. It was released as a single on Nov. 2. Fascinatingly, it’s exactly 50 years to the day when a fan of John Lennon, William Martin Joel, released his own single titled, “Piano Man.”

Is it Lennon and George Harrison’s benevolent spirits? This sub-freezing New York November? Chills and goosebumps abound every time you listen: you just want more. Like your favorite show’s beloved series finale, this song pulls out all the stops, substituting them by stuffing in as many Easter eggs harkening back to the characters’ glory days as it can. “Now and Then” opens with McCartney’s attention-grabbing contemplative piano chords as Harrison’s haunting guitar gently weeps in the first verse. Ringo Starr’s percussion kicks the song into a reflective, vulnerable swing. Entering the first chorus becomes nostalgic and playful. The next stanza is optimistically hopeful with added guitar accents. By the instrumental bridge, the song gleefully has fun, with background vocals and magic-carpet orchestral strings swelling. Our outro of the first verse flourishes with Harrison’s 1995 guitar solo, a fitting, humbly adequate tribute to the quietest Beatle and his bandmates, winding in grand syncopated fashion. Over it all is indeed Lennon’s restored vocals. A triumphant psych-softie of Beatles-anthemic proportions, a medley of modern pop and classic rock, plus something intangibly, impossibly, indeterminately timeless — you, a good listener, experience an emotional rollercoaster, mutually exchanging musical emotions that mystically morph into a ticket to ride what only the Fab Four’s magical mystery tour can provide.

Naysayers claim it doesn’t qualify as a Beatles song. If that’s their allegation, what does? Does their criteria exclude iconic favorites like “Here Comes The Sun,” “Blackbird” and “Yesterday,” all made entirely without Lennon? Everyone considers those to be Beatles songs, so by deniers’ standards, “Now and Then” is even more a Beatles song than preceding works. Lennon and Harrison survive through music; they’ve always been here. Sure, the song is posthumous 21 and 43 years over, but we’re blessed they wouldn’t let it be. Time stands still for the undying friendship that lives on in and after death. Yes, to the doubters, McCartney has taken Lennon’s solo and added the contributions of Harrison, Starr and himself. But though the song wasn’t written for (all) the Beatles, any song by the Beatles is a song by the Beatles. I’ve been playing it eight days a week. It has all my loving appreciation; give it yours.

Like it or not, mixed reactions unitedly agree on what this song is: a little of everything. Diehard fans call it a grand finale, others a nostalgic continuation. One thing’s for certain: “Now and Then” isn’t just one of those, it’s both. That’s what has given Beatles music the greatness it has, so many things in so many ways to so many people. It’s a multitasking goodbye: from Lennon to McCartney, Harrison to Lennon, McCartney and Starr to Lennon and Harrison, the Beatles to the world. 

“Now and Then” is made all the more poignant by a trio of passings that hit home: firstly the near-two-year anniversary of my dad’s, my memories of whom flow to a Beatles soundtrack. The Saturday after the song debuted, we lost one of my decades-long family friends. And the tragic death of Matthew Perry is still freshly raw. The most memorable moments of so many lives are defined by Beatles music: moments dotted with tears of delight at couples having their first dances, kindergartners singing at their graduation or despair by families and friends saying goodbye to their loved ones. “In My Life” is as popular a wedding ceremony song as it is a funeral’s ending song. “Now and Then” shall have the same legacy. That’s the magical quality of the Beatles: they not only transcend time, having produced music that endures as strong as the day their songs hit airwaves; they transcend purposes, genres and boundaries. Anything that appeals to all audiences is venerable beyond belief.

My gut tells me this isn’t the very last “final” Beatles song. Everyone thought it was “The End.” Do you want to know a secret? McCartney and/or Starr might pull or be given an archived cassette tape from some dusty studio, overgrown summer estate or decommissioned mini-fridge of a polychromatic ’65 Rolls-Royce Phantom V. Because the AI-extractor tech exists along with countless unfinished demos, I’ve got a feeling this isn’t the last that we’ll hear of the Beatles. They’re contemporary yet classic, modern while memorializing, reminiscent of life’s give and take. If the Beatles’ final chapter has a theme tune, their literal swan song’s unshackled to fly across the universe; “Now and Then” is at long last free as a bird.