The song Paul McCartney wrote for a video game
Paul McCartney has consistently delivered excellent songs over the past 60 years or so, including hits from the Beatles’ catalogue, as well as his solo work and that in Wings. However, we might never have expected the legendary musician to write a song for a video game, but in 2014, he provided ‘Hope for the Future’ for Destiny.
Lev Chapelsky, who worked on the game, said that he was “gobsmacked” at the thought of being able to work with the legendary musician. “I’m a huge fan of The Beatles,” he said. “It would be insanely beautiful on so many levels. However, as to whether that was the right fit for the product and the market? Honestly, I had some reservations there.”
However, Chapelsky’s reservations were put to one side when he gained the understanding that McCartney wants to use his talents in the way he can. “He wants to try and do everything at least once,” Chapelsky noted. “He wrote an opera. He’s done classical music. Every subgenre you can imagine, he’s done. He’s ticking off all the boxes of music that exist in the world, but he hadn’t done anything [for] games, and that spelt incredible opportunity.”
McCartney noted what it was like composing for a video game and how it differed from writing a normal song. “When you’re writing something like ‘Hope for the Future’, which is custom made, it is like doing a portrait for someone,” he said. “You have to use your imagination and work out what they need, what they’re going to want and then what you want to give them.”
Evidently, Macca gained some knowledge of the themes of the game and used that as a jumping-off point. “You’ve got to combine those things into something that you still think maintains integrity,” he explained. “So in the game, you’re a Guardian of the last city on Earth, so that suggested to me the ‘hope for the future’ idea, and I went from there.”
However, he also felt that the song ought to be able to be used outside of the game in order for it to hold the weight that we expect of a McCartney classic. “I thought it is not just a game song,” McCartney admitted. “This will get played outside the game, so it has got to be standalone too; you can’t have references to aliens, or people will think, ‘What’s he talking about?’ So it had to have its own standalone meaning and integrity.”
Fortunately, Macca’s children and grandchildren had more of a familiarity with video games, so he used their experience to inform the writing. “I know from my kids and my grandkids, they just bury themselves in a game and I don’t think they’ve got time to listen to my music,” he admitted. “Their agenda is pretty full with all the other stuff, you know, so I like the idea of infiltrating into their agenda.”
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