Right at the end of 2023, an amazing thing happened. The great movie director Peter Jackson got with Giles Martin, son of the Beatles’ producer George Martin, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, and using ‘computer learning,’ salvaged a John Lennon demo of a song called “Now and Then.”
It became a massive hit (#1 in England, 54 years after their last #1, and the same type of reception all over the world). And the video Jackson created was remarkable.
Using today’s technology, it “placed” John Lennon and George Harrison alongside Paul and Ringo, and truly felt like a new Beatles song, with a message that resonated everywhere – how we miss those that we love, and how much they affect our lives.
But it also fleshed out an interesting phenomenon. Thousands of people, from 76 years old, to people 7 years old, went online or made YouTube comments about how much the Beatles changed their lives.
The reason: When you move people emotionally, when they feel like someone else is feeling the same things they’re going through, that’s when they bond with you.
I talk all the time about finding the core Emotion of a Subject, and making sure that nothing you do on the air LACKS an emotion of some sort. The Beatles – almost 60 years after we first heard them – made that case.
