Paul McCartney Releases Destiny Single 'Hope For The Future'

Amagansett rock royal Paul McCartney released the single and video for his Destiny video game theme song “Hope For The Future” around the globe on Monday, December 8. The song was written exclusively for Destiny, the blockbuster video game from Bungie—creators of the groundbreaking Halo game series—and it appeared in the game’s end credits, but it had not yet been released as a single.

Along with its original main mix, the “Hope For The Future” single comes with four exclusive mixes, including a “Thrash” version, “Beatsession Mix,” “Jaded Mix” and the “Mirwais Mix” by Paris-based record producer and songwriter Mirwais Ahmadzaï.

McCartney first announced he was working with Bungie back in 2012, but little was known about what exactly he was doing until much closer to the game’s release in September of this year. “Hope For The Future” was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London with McCartney and a 120-piece orchestra backing him. He allowed Bungie to use his song on Destiny free of charge, explaining to Vulture.com that he was doing it for the creativity and to reach a younger audience. McCartney also contributed to the game’s score.

Talking about the process of writing an original song for a video game, Paul said, “When you’re writing something like ‘Hope For The Future’, which is custom made, it is like doing a portrait for someone. 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. Then you’ve got to combine those three things into something that you still think maintains integrity. 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. Then I thought it is not just a game song, this will get played outside the game so it has got to be stand alone too, you can’t have references to aliens or people will think, ‘What’s he talking about?’ So it had to have its own stand alone meaning and integrity.”

Along with the single’s release on Monday, McCartney debuted his “Hope For The Future” video on Wired.com. In it, McCartney appears as a less than life sized, blue-toned hologram—projected by “Ghost,” a floating AI robot guide and assistant, who happens to be voiced in the game by Hamptons regular and Game of Thrones superstar Peter Dinklage.

Watch the video below, and get your copy of the “Hope For The Future” single from iTunes by clicking here.