‘Free as a Bird’ continues to prove that The Beatles’ history is never finished
Back in 2024, I spoke to one of the world’s leading religious experts about what I thought to be a monumental potentiality of pop culture: in 2,000 years’ time, could John Lennon’s proclamation be proved correct and The Beatles would end up bigger than Jesus? Needless to say, the expert found the concept vaguely ridiculous.
However, the kernel of the idea was credible: in the blink of an eye, The Beatles had amassed a monumental following of fans. The figure keeps growing, as does the religiosity surrounding them. Their output is deemed miraculous. Their lore is deemed scripture. They are, if nothing else, the omnipotent gods of pop culture.
The good word of the Fab Four continues to spread far and wide with an array of continuations of their Christ-like rhapsody over this sorry world. The latest incarnation of their unfurling gospel arrives in the form of the 25th anniversary edition of The Beatles Anthology.
There’ll be a new Anthology book, music collection, and docuseries, but leading the way of this mammoth announcement was a 2025 mix of ‘Free as a Bird’ by Giles Martin. That feels perfectly fitting.
It is a song that can never truly be complete. It arrived in 1995 like a holy ghost, and now it continues to represent how the band are a gift that keeps on giving. Resurrected from a lost John Lennon demo, this sketch of a song was loving saved by his bandmates and presented as a farewell, but it was far from a goodbye.
Mostly, that’s a symbol of how much people simply care, including the group themselves. For a lot of bands, a half-baked demo is something that must be promptly cast to the ash heap, but even for the former bandmembers themselves, ‘Free as a Bird’ represented another chance to honour the magic of their creation, and speak into the profound sense of collaboration that brought it about.
It also offered the chance to fly The Beatles further into the future on the wings of a what-if. This latest announcement continues that flight.
The 2025 version of ‘Free as a Bird’ is crisp and contemporary. Thanks to Giles’ innovative mix, it eclipses mere reheated nostalgia, and – much like The Beatles’ mutating lore – serves as a recontextualisation of the past in a contemporary age. Simply put, the band continue to inspire and the scope of their influence continues to expand, so a song that remains unfinished, destined to go through endless permutations, serves as a metaphor for the running mill of the magical mystery band.
Maybe there’s a touch of portent in that, too. We don’t know what Lennon would’ve wanted for the song, so perhaps we shouldn’t meddle too much with what is there. In the post-truth world, all sorts of problems might present themselves from ever-greater reframing of the past, but for now, ‘Free as a Bird’ (2025) reaffirms The Beatles as a band whose legacy knows no end.
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