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It’s been a full decade since Jack Malik appeared like a bolt out of the blue, pockets stuffed with dozens of fantastic songs that immediately became instant classics. But after a few whirlwind months of #1 single after #1 single, Malik caused a worldwide sensation when he confessed, onstage at Wembley Arena, to having plagiarized each and every one of his songs from a band called The Beatles, a band that allegedly existed only in the mind of Malik and two others (Leo Kozlovsky and Elizabeth Lancashire).
But how is this possible? How could Malik possibly have stolen his songs from a band that never existed? Many have hypothesized that Malik was suffering from a psychotic break, and that his manager should never have allowed him to sign away millions, possibly billions, in royalties. Others, including a quantum physicist or two, have put forth the explanation that Malik’s consciousness was somehow swapped from a parallel dimension during the confusion of a global blackout. But the reality is, no matter how much he claims to have come forward with the unvarnished if unlikely truth, nobody except Jack Malik himself will ever know the real story behind his work.
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of his first and only album, One Man Only, we’ve tracked down all the key players in the saga of Jack Malik and The Beatles, to try and shed some more light on the fascinating mystery behind the music.
I. Sing My Summer Song: Latitude Music Festival
Before the worldwide blackout that Malik claims caused the world to forget the previous publication of all his songs, Jack Malik was just a former primary school music teacher working part-time at a wholesale warehouse and playing wildly unpopular local gigs.
Jack Malik: I’d loved music my whole life, and I’d recently quit teaching to pursue my dream of becoming a rock star. It wasn’t going well.
Carol di Martino (Malik’s friend): I mean, Jack is great. Really great guy, so nice, so funny–but, I mean, if I’m being honest, his songs were not good. I mean, "Dinosaur" was about a dinosaur.
Ellie Appleton (Malik’s former manager and current wife): He wasn’t doing all that badly, really. I’d just gotten him his first festival show, at Latitude! Sure, I had to pull some strings to get him the gig, but it wasn’t all that many strings. The tent was not large. And he hadn’t been making a whole lot of progress, but I always knew he had potential.
Rocky (Malik’s manager, last name unknown): The Latitude gig was dire. Truly dire. Even the toddlers in the tent couldn’t stand it. And I think Jack was starting to finally figure out that he had, well, to put it nicely, absolutely no songwriting talent whatsoever.
Appleton: We’d gotten in a fight, because he wanted to quit music and I didn’t want to let him. He got out of my car and then–well. Then the power went out worldwide and he got hit by a bus.
Malik: I really can’t describe to you how bizarre it was. They were one of, if not the most famous band in the world, and then I got knocked my teeth knocked out of my head and when I came to, nobody else could remember them. And other things were different, too: there were novels missing, and brands, and "Wonderwall"–but mostly, yeah, The Beatles was the big one. I never really considered it at the time, because again, I was missing teeth and a little concussed, but I don’t know why a global outage would do something like this–
Jack Malik continued in this vein for several minutes. We’ve edited his speeches for brevity throughout this piece.
Malik: I was nothing before the Beatles. But at least I was me.
II. Back in the USSR: The Warehouse Tapes
It took a few weeks for Malik to realize that he had unique access to these songs, and then to begin capitalizing on them. But before long he’d reconstructed enough of The Beatles catalogue to start passing them off as his own original works, and he’d started down the road to success.
Malik: Everyone was asking me about my songwriting process. But it wasn’t songwriting; it was just trying to dredge up half-remembered lyrics from the depths of my brain. Some songs came easily, but others–well. Luckily the best ones came easiest. Honestly, I still can’t remember the second verse to "Maxwell’s Silver Hammer," and I have to say I’m not too broken up about it.
Gavin Arnold (Producer of Tracks on the Tracks): I heard him at that pub and there was just something– something in those songs. I didn’t know what it was but I knew it could be big, it just–I had a really good feeling. And I wasn’t exactly rolling in clients at the moment, so I figured what would it hurt to bring Jack in?
Malik: I’d been feeling pretty bad, because I was sitting on this stash of songs that I knew were good, and I still wasn’t getting anywhere. Look, I know I’m not the most charismatic guy, but I had Past Masters Volumes 1 and 2 in my back pocket and I was still working Bar Mitzvahs. And then Gavin picked me up.
Arnold: We actually did a lot of really interesting production work on that EP, just because my budget wasn’t… well, I didn’t have a budget. It was a huge amount of fun but what really surprised me was how much of a vision Jack had about everything, down to the percussion, which was not exactly Jack’s specialty, I’ll just say. He may not have been able to keep a rhythm but he had an exact vision for how even the hand claps had to sound; we had to put on dishwashing gloves to get the right effect. They redid everything later in a proper studio in L.A. but I honestly think the production on those early versions had something special that they lost later on.
Dominic Coleman (Host, Ipswitch Evening News): We brought him on the show to kill air time. Didn’t really think much of his song, honestly.
Ed Sheeran (Musician): I saw him on TV and heard "In My Life" and it was really good. And I needed someone to fill in and, honestly, I kind of just like fucking with my management team. Sure, yeah, I want my opener to be this random guy I found on a wholesale warehouse website, make it happen, Ted! Have fun with that one! But I really did like the songs.
Jane Seaborn (Air hostess on Sheeran’s private plane): The first time I met Jack he asked me for cocaine. On a three hour flight. Not the first time it’s happened, mind you, but he didn’t make a great first impression.
Malik: God, I miss Coke. I mean, Pepsi is almost as good. But it’s not as good.
Leo Kozlovsky (Electrician, co-rememberer of The Beatles): I went to Ed Sheeran show because am big fan of Ed Sheeran. Love "A-Team," love "Lego House," love "Castle on the Hill." "Shape of You" could be better. Anyway, I hear song again and was like suddenly–like lightning in my mind. Beatles! How could I forget Beatles! Had not realized they were gone until I heard it again and then I remembered what was missing. Those songs were my childhood, yes? And Jack Malik brought them back to me.
Sheeran: I did think it was a bit of a weird move to play a song about the USSR in Moscow in 2019, but it seemed to go over well. I thought they might find that one a bit offensive, but if the Russians didn’t mind, who am I to say anything? In general, yeah, Jack really just knocked the show out of the park. And then afterwards we had that stupid song contest and he kicked my arse; if I’m being honest, it really did bruise my self-esteem a bit. Made me feel a hell of a lot better when I learned he didn’t write that song after all. Like, yeah, okay, maybe my song was about penguins, but at least I really wrote it!
III. Here Comes the Sun: Los Angeles and Universal Music Group
Meeting Sheeran was the first step in Malik’s eventual journey to fame, but there was still a long way to go.
Debra Hammer (Malik’s agent): I heard his songs at Ed’s Moscow show, and I figured, yeah, I can probably sell that. Sure, he’d need a bit of investment up front on the whole “looks” front, but I really thought he’d be worth the money. He was not, as it turned out, worth the money.
Malik: When I got to Los Angeles, that was when I first started to really feel guilty about what I was doing. I mean, the songs were stolen, plain and simple. Nobody was missing them, but they were stolen.
Hammer: Let’s be honest. The man was going to be a hard sell. The songs were there, but he had the approximate stage presence of a wet paper towel. But I can sell pretty much anything. I mean, Jesus, I made Ava Max happen. Ava fucking Max!
Malik: Songs aside, that was also when I first started to really think about what was going on. I still don’t really know what happened, and that haunts me to this day. Were the Beatles erased from my original world during the blackout? Or am I in a new dimension now? If I travelled through alternate timelines, what happened to the Jack Malik who used to live in this world? Did I kill him?
Hans Prince (Producer): Working with Jack was simultaneously easy, and a huge challenge. As a producer, you get a lot of big personalities in the studio, a lot of divas, and Jack was just about as far away from that as you can get. He was just so kind and polite. But he also–he was so obsessive about every single backing track, the guitars, the drums, the strings. Drove me fucking crazy, like, let me do my job, man!
Malik: I mean the Beatles were important, don’t get me wrong, but lung cancer rates are down nearly eighty percent because nobody invented cigarettes. Lung cancer! Emphysema! My granddad smoked two packs a day his whole life and died of lung cancer before I was even born, and here–we had lunch last week. That’s amazing.
Hammer: So Jack was a mess. We released a couple songs, digital only, because I hoped we would be able to put off making him do interviews until we’d had a few more weeks to record more tracks and just fix Jack’s whole… y’know… deal. And by Jove, it worked.
IV. All the Lonely People: Liverpool to the Pier Hotel
As Universal Music Group began to release Malik’s singles, his buzz began to grow in earnest. "Yesterday," "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and "She Loves You," all became #1 singles, and "Here Comes The Sun" and "Carry That Weight" were close behind. They racked up millions upon millions of streams, obliterating the records that had been recently set by Lil Nas X. But as Malik’s popularity exponentially grew, things behind the scenes were getting darker.
Appleton: It was around then that I would turn the TV on and hear about him on the news, and I mean the real news, not the local stuff. And he was always trending on Twitter, and Spotify was always putting his songs on all my playlists, and the thing about the songs is that they were just–really, really good.
Malik: Things were going well in L.A. but I was starting to get stuck, I was starting to run out of material. I mean, I had plenty of second-tier stuff, but nobody was going to put "The Ballad of John and Yoko" on an album, especially since nobody had any clue who John and Yoko were. So I went to Liverpool.
Elizabeth Lancashire (Nurse, co-rememberer of The Beatles): I’d been a huge fan as a girl, and when I started to hear Jack’s versions on the radio I was just so happy. Sure, he got the words wrong a lot of the time, but his voice wasn’t bad and it was just so lovely to hear those songs again. When I saw the Daily Mail photos of him in Liverpool, I knew he was here to see the sights: Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby’s grave. And I was right. I know these names don’t mean anything to any of you, but to me–to Leo–to Jack–to us, these places were everything.
Hammer: I was furious he was running off to Liverpool of all places, just when things were starting to get really big for him, but honestly I found Jack pretty irritating, so if he wanted to take a vacation from L.A. then I was going to enjoy my vacation from his squishy, pathetic little face.
Appleton: I went to Liverpool to see Jack again, because I missed him and Liverpool was a lot closer than Los Angeles. Look, he’d been my best friend forever, and I’d been in love with him nearly that long, and he was wearing a flattering and expensive turtleneck, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.
Rocky: Genius band from another dimension that only Jack can remember? Fine. The really unbelievable part was that it was Ellie pining over Jack. I mean, have you seen her? Have you seen him?!
Malik: I went back to L.A. after that, and I just couldn’t get away from what I’d done. The stuff the marketing team had cooked up was just–well, you’ve seen it. I’d suggested so many things from the actual history of The Beatles, and the only one that didn’t get shot down was performing from the roof of a hotel.
Hammer: Most of Jack’s ideas were absolute garbage, but the Pier Hotel worked out surprisingly well.
Sheila Malik (Jack’s mother): This is going to sound so cruel when I say it, but bear in mind that he lived in my house when he was writing "Dinosaur." I heard him rehearsing it. I heard him–what I’m trying to say is, that day at the Pier Hotel was when I first realised that Jack’s songs were actually very, very good.
Nick Michell (Malik’s friend): I don’t know, I never thought any of them were half as good as "Summer Song."
Editor’s note: " Summer Song" is the only truly original song Jack Malik ever released. It is terrible.
Kozlovsky: I found Liz online, in YouTube comments, and we came to hotel together. Was dream of mine to see Beatles live, but was not possible, before; to see Jack Malik was next best thing.
Lancashire: We found him and talked to him and oh, he’d been feeling so guilty, the poor thing. And I understand why, but is it really stealing if nobody was around to even notice they were missing?
Malik: When Liz and Leo talked to me, I was so relieved I could cry. I’d been having nightmares about the possibility that there were people out there who knew what I’d done, and who would hold it against me, drag the truth into the public eye and make me pay. So when I finally met other people who understood what I’d been going through and they were on my side, they were happy about what I’d done–it was incredible. It was a huge weight off my shoulders. And they also… I can’t talk about this, but they really helped me find my way.
V. All You Need Is Love: Wembley and Beyond
Jack Malik was on the verge of becoming the most famous and successful musician in the history of the Billboard charts. The only person getting in his way was himself.
Malik: It had gone too far. And I was feeling trapped, and also, kind of, like–in Doctor Who when people mess with timelines, like, bad stuff happens. I was starting to worry that maybe a bad CGI dimension monster was going to crawl out of my sink and try to eat me.
Sheeran: I had no idea what he had planned when he called me and asked to perform at Wembley. I don’t know if I would’ve let him if I’d known he would–what am I saying, of course I would’ve. Jack Malik no longer being a competitor has been fantastic for my album sales.
Appleton: When he first started talking onstage–it’s such a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but at first I was just really relieved that he didn’t actually write “I Saw Her Standing There.” I mean, ‘she was just seventeen, you know what i mean?’ Ew, Jack.
Hammer: When he stood up there and told everyone–and uploaded the album–I could have just about killed him. God, it makes me nauseous to talk about even now. I mean, sure, I still made eighteen million off the whole thing, but the album–if the album had taken off I could’ve gone swimming in pools of Franklins like a cartoon duck.
Rocky: I know I’m the one who let him throw away like, a hundred million dollars or whatever, but I’m kind of still proud that I managed to get the upload button right.
Appleton: And then after that, he said he loved me, and–oh, you’ve heard the rest.
Malik: I mean, on the one hand, I did throw away a hell of a lot of money and fame. But I did get about two million out of just the singles before I shut it down, so I’m not exactly hard up for cash. And seriously, out of historical context, I was starting to run out of usable stuff, anyway; I recorded a demo of "Good Day, Sunshine," and Debra actually compared it to "Summer Song." I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended.
Appleton: Jack and I got married and had two children. He went back to teaching and he still gets recognized a few times a month, usually at Lidl, but things have gone back to normal to an almost shocking degree.
Malik: It’s actually surreal how neatly everything snapped back. I have a theory that the universe was correcting itself, just using me as a conduit to bring those songs back into the world, and when I stepped out of the public eye, the universe was happy to smooth things over and let that happen as long as the songs were free. But I still think about it, nearly every day: am I myself? Or am I a copy of myself? What’s the Jack Malik in the universe where The Beatles were a household name up to? I hope he’s doing half as well as I am. I hope they don’t miss me, in my old world. I hope–
Once more, Jack Malik continued in this vein for several minutes.
Hammer: I mean, dimension hopping? It sounds fake. But when you think about it, it sounds less fake than the possibility that Jack fucking Malik wrote “A Long and Winding Road.”
Sheeran: Do I think Jack’s telling the truth? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t really believe in that sci-fi stuff, but if it wasn’t true, why would he have given away all the songs?
Malik: I have regrets, yeah. Who doesn’t? But in the end, it’s like Paul said: obla-di, obla-da, life goes on, yeah!
Hammer: Yeah, no, I’ve heard the Obla-whatever stuff Jack put on YouTube. All I’m saying is, even without the children’s choir, there’s a reason we didn’t record that one. I don’t know if The Beatles were real or not, but either way I can say this for sure: they weren’t all winners.