Destiny Original Soundtrack

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Track list

Disc 1

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About

From Wikipedia:

Destiny Original Soundtrack is the official soundtrack for the video game, composed by Michael Salvatori, C Paul Johnson, Martin O’Donnell, Skye Lewin, and Stan LePard, with contributions and input from British musician Paul McCartney. Released digitally via iTunes on September 26, 2014, the soundtrack contains 44 instrumental songs from the game. The soundtrack marked Martin O’Donnell’s final work for Bungie, after years of composing for the Halo franchise, as well as several games before that. In addition, McCartney wrote and recorded an original song inspired by the game.

Early in Destiny’s development, O’Donnell was contacted by Pete Parsons (current Chief Operating Officer of Bungie), and was asked to begin writing music for the game. At the time, Destiny was still in its infancy, as it lacked any gameplay material for O’Donnell to score music to, so instead, O’Donnell began creating music based solely on the games ideas, stories, and artwork. By February 17, 2013, over 50 minutes of the soundtrack had already been recorded with a 106-piece orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in London. O’Donnell gave the early pieces of music to Bungie in hopes that they would foster inspiration within the development team.

Unlike the Halo series, where pieces of music were only 2–3 minutes long, Martin has stated that the soundtrack for Destiny has no time restrictions, with the pieces clocking in “as long as they need to be.” O’Donnell collaborated with Paul McCartney on the soundtrack for the better part of two years, as they traded ideas, melody samples and themes back and forth. On April 11, 2014, Martin O’Donnell was dismissed without cause by the board of directors at Bungie. This caused concern as to whether this would affect the game; however, Pete Parsons stated that O’Donnell’s work on the game had been completed before his dismissal and would appear in the final product.

Music of the Spheres

Music of the Spheres is an eight-part musical companion piece to Destiny, composed by Marty O’Donnell together with Michael Salvatori and Paul McCartney. Parts of the music were used to accompany a Destiny trailer at E3 2013, and in the official soundtrack. But following O’Donnell’s dismissal from and subsequent legal dispute with Bungie, Music of the Spheres remained unreleased. It was leaked to the Internet by unknown persons in December 2017. Bungie officially released the album on June 1, 2018.

From an interview with Bungie’s Community Manager Eric Osbourne:

Paul McCartney wrote the score for this game.

He contributed orchestral elements to the game. We have a team of composers here in the building who actually score the game to the action, so they put in a lot of work. We don’t want to dismiss those guys. But Paul contributing to the soundtrack is amazing. And he wrote a new single for the game as well.

Yes, but the guy wrote “Hey Jude.” How on Earth did you convince him to do music for a video game? How did you pitch this to him, and why do you think he did it? I’m guessing that there was an enormous check involved.

There was no check involved, big or otherwise. He’s in it for the creativity. He got a wonderful opportunity to reach an audience that wouldn’t typically be immersed in Paul McCartney. They might hear the name — of course he’s everywhere, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics, obviously he’s touring and recording nonstop — but he sees it as a way to reach a new audience that might not otherwise hear his music.

I’m really excited to be working on writing music with Bungie, the studio that made Halo.

Paul McCartney – From paulmccartney.com, July 7, 2012

I was intrigued by the intricacy of the music because in a game if you go one route a certain piece of the music plays. 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. Their agenda is pretty full with all the other stuff, you know, so I like the idea of infiltrating into their agenda.

Paul McCartney, from interview with NME, December 2, 2014

I’m not very good at games. I’ve got so much else to be getting on with; I can’t have my face in a screen, you know, bopping along in a game. I had a go [at Destiny] and it was great, but I got mashed almost instantly. The aliens mashed me.

Paul McCartney, from interview with NME, December 2, 2014

Last updated on December 12, 2020