Hope For The Future

Song facts

“Hope For The Future” (initially named “Hope“) is a song written by Paul McCartney, released digitally on December 8, 2014, and on vinyl in January 2015. It was written to be part of the soundtrack for the video game “Destiny“, and appeared in the end credits of the game.

“Hope For The Future” was initially part of a musical suite – named “Music Of The Spheres” (which Paul McCartney contributed to) – which was finally shelved by Bungie, the studio designing “Destiny“. “Music Of The Spheres” was finally released in 2018; its latest track, named “The Hope“, contains “Hope For The Future“.

From paulmccartney.com, September 12th, 2014:

[…] Years in the making ‘Destiny’ is the biggest entertainment property of 2014. Earlier this week fans were queuing through the night to get their first glimpse. Stores across the world opened early in order to meet the demand. Made by Bungie, the studio behind ‘Halo’, and published by Activision, the company that brought you ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Destiny’ is expected to change the gaming industry. The hype surrounding this release demonstrates how the gaming industry has overtaken Hollywood.

The continuing success of this market and the scale of ‘Destiny’ is further underlined by the fact Paul McCartney has written the game’s end title theme song ‘Hope’, as well as working on the soundtrack. Throughout his career Paul has always looked at ways to reach new audiences with his music and has never been afraid to try out new ideas or platforms. This is the first time that Paul has ever written for a computer game and he has likely started yet another trend for the world of popular music. Paul teased fans with a tweet in 2012 confirming that he was working on a project with Bungie but this week following the games release the wait was over for fans when ‘Hope’ started to appear on the Internet. […]

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

How on Earth did you convince [Paul McCartney] 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 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

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 basically trying to save Earth from the invaders, the aliens, 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.

Paul McCartney – From paulmccartney.com, January 13, 2015

A trusted contributor of the Steve Hoffman Music Forums wrote:

A part of the song is coming from “Kiss Me Now” , an unreleased song from 1984 which was demoed by George Martin ( The part from 2.00 to 2.18 mn)

From forum resident Etcetera

To be noticed that it was reported that Paul McCartney recorded a song named “Hope” in 2012 for his “Kisses On The Bottom” album; it is not known if “Hope” and “Hope For The Future” are related or not.

When released in January 2015, the “Hope For The Future” included four different remixes. Two other remixes were released as part of a RecordStoreDay release in April 2015.

Last updated on December 9, 2020

Lyrics

Variations

Videos