A few posts ago I talked about how I’m not really a fan of opinions. One thing that I like even less are music reviews. I just don’t really get them. I know….I have done a few of them in my past. I do not look back on any of them with any kind of good vibes. I wish I could delete them all, but who cares.

In the circles which I roam around in, I’ve heard rumblings that a lot of people do not like the new 2025 mix of The Beatles song Real Love, which was originally released on their album Anthology 2 in 1996. This new 2025 mix, much like the previously released 2025 mix of Free as a Bird, featured “cleaned up” vocals from John Lennon. The vocals on the original mixes of these songs were from John Lennon demos that he made back in the late 70’s. The quality wasn’t perfect, but for some reason it worked when it was mixed together with the work that the surviving Beatles did on the songs in the 90’s. To this day, Free as a Bird is easily one of my favorite Beatles songs. Real Love is also fab, but we didn’t come here to hear me gush about these tunes.

The vocals done by John Lennon were cleaned up using the MAL De-Mixing Technology (which you can read about here), a technology that uses AI to separate musical tracks that were previously linked together on recorded tape. Using this technology, the Beatles team cut out the vocals, cleaned them up using the technology, put them back in the song, and mixed it to give it a new 2025 mix. The two mixes (the 2025 mix is above, the 1996 mix is below) are both great listens and from just one listen through you can really hear the difference between the original vocals and the cleaned up vocals.

I like both versions. My heart goes back to the original, but that ones been in my life for over 30 years now. Knowing what I know about John Lennon, I know that the guy really liked his vocals to sound odd, weird, and processed. That’s how they sound on the original mix of Real Love. But I also really love the 2025 mix of Real Love because it sounds like John is right there in the room with his friends. That’s a powerful thing. One thing that I always try to think about when I listen to the Beatles is how these guys were all just really good friends and how much they cared for each other. It had to be hard being a Beatle, and it had to be really hard for the other three to lose John like that. This new mix, while it doesn’t sound like how I remember Real Love always sounding to me, gives me another way to listen to a great song by a great band. I am thankful that we’ve got all of this great stuff from them.