Real Love 2025
REAL LOVE 2025 MIX: Why does it sound so different?
Guest blogger: Mike Carrera
The reason isn’t that the vocals have been cleaned up with modern technology, but rather that the 2025 Mix uses a combination of two different vocal takes of John, taken from two different demos (out of the more than ten that exist for this song), unlike the original 1995/96 version, which only uses one of them.
By comparing the two versions in real time, playing them simultaneously (or even with the vocals separated), it’s very easy to identify the changes.
John’s “new” vocal in the 2025 Mix differ not only in the pitch he sings in, or in the way he “extends” some words more than others, but also in the lyrics.
In the original version, John sings “LOST like some forgotten dreams” at the beginning, while in the 2025 Mix it’s “GONE like some forgotten dreams.”
From the opening line, we have the first change in the singing style: “All my little plans and schemes.” In the 2025 Mix, John extends the word “schemes” by a second and a half between the “m” and the “e”.
At 24 seconds, in the 2025 Mix, John extends the word “doing” within the line “Seems like all they really were doing.”
John’s intonation on the words “I know” and “will go” in the lyrics: “From this moment on I know, Exactly where my life will go” is different.
John’s vocal extends the words “before” and “more” within the lines: “Thought I’d been in love before, But in my heart, I wanted more”.
These are the minutes and seconds in the 2025 Mix that use John’s new vocal; the rest is the same as in the original version.
00:11-00:25
01:27-01:38
02:25-02:40
The 2025 Mix available on ‘Anthology 4’ on CD/LP or Streaming, is 20 seconds shorter than the original version; however, the restored 4K music video released today, November 21, 2025, does include those additional 20 seconds using the 2025 Mix, for completists of all these variants.
Don’t rule out that many of George’s call and response licks have been altered / removed, especially on the last verse before the refrain. That deletion robs the song of his expert improvisation around the rhythm which made the 1995 release especially affecting. Its absence renders this version sadly “cut and paste” and antiseptic.
As the previous poster noted…where the heck are George’s electric guitar bits during the second half of the song??? That’s definitely not good at all
So maybe the remixed 2015 version is going to be the most definitive or most enjoyable after all?
Even George his still/photo has been deleted from the video..
The 2015 remix is canon for me. What a missed opportunity. Thanks Mike for your
excellent analysis
The new Real Love mix sucks. You removed excellent George guitar licks near end. A travesty!
The clean vocals are great to hear. The mix is a lot sharper. After a few listens it settles in. The mixes from 1+ music videos are good as well.
What is mentioned but not discussed frequently is that Jeff Lynne did the 2025 remix. This is great & well as well as very interesting as he seemingly was not involved in the final creation of Now & Then. I would love to hear Jeff’s comments about returning to these songs 30 years later.
I can’t agree with “guest blogger” Mike that the only reason of the differences in the new Real Love mix is just because the vocal track was done based on 2 different demos. I agree that they used different takes for this version, but they surely did use of MAL software to clean those tracks, making the new vocal track sounds very robotic and that’s the problem, the overuse of cleaning software, not the use of different takes of the song.
Also, the idea of taking away those Harrison guitar licks of the pre-chorus for me it’s so Jeff Lynne style, because he prefered that typical guitar descending line which he used a lot on his production, like the one on “you got it” by Orbison or “this is love” by Harrison
Not sure if the reason why another take was used. But my hunch is, it was used to salvage some parts that might not be able to be cleaned fully by MAL, or not able to be cleaned by in the first place. I remember in the DVD then that there were also parts of John’s vocal from the original demo that was mimicked by Paul because they sound too thin. So maybe using another take is a feasible option in my opinion.
Could I suggest that someone at Apple finally noticed the version on John’s “Imagine” film soundtrack album that had a much better recorded vocal , and decided to use parts of that ?
I actually think it works better without the missing guitar fills, I now find them intrusive, like the “lost” guitar” fills in Here Comes The Sun.