The Beatles, despite breaking up 55 years ago, have earned two nominations for the 2025 Grammy Awards: Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance. Both nominations are for their song Now and Then, which was originally demoed by John Lennon in the 1970s but was finally completed last year by surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
The Beatles, long revered in the music world, have continued to capture Grammy voters’ attention over the years. For instance, their 2016 documentary Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years won Best Music Film, beating Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Despite their unmatched legacy, the band never won Record of the Year during their prime, despite being nominated four times for classics like I Want to Hold Your Hand and Yesterday.
A win at the 2025 Grammys would solidify the enduring power of Beatlemania, though there’s some debate around the band’s use of machine learning technology to clean up Lennon’s old cassette recordings. The Recording Academy has strict rules regarding AI, stipulating that only human creators can win Grammys and that the human element in a piece must remain significant. While Now and Then fits this criteria, the use of AI has sparked some controversy, which could potentially impact voters’ decisions.