All you need is – love Mojis? Skype’s version of emoticons (Mojis) offer the perfect way to communicate when words can’t quite express what you feel. Now Paul McCartney is partnering with the video and voice chat giant to bring you a brand new way to share your love this Valentine’s Day – 10 very special love-themed audio emojis, combining the iconic songwriter’s original five-second ditties with animations. The new Mojis are available now on Skype for free.
One of the most successful composers and performers of all time, McCartney’s song for the Beatles – “Yesterday” – has been covered by more artists than any other copyrighted song in history. His tunes for Skype feature vocals, guitar, keyboard, drums, xylophone and a Moog synthesizer to keep the overall sound more modern and electronic. Quirky characters like flirtatious bananas and sumo Cupids dance around to brief bits of
instrumentation or McCartney’s vocalizations, sans lyrics.
“It turned out to be a great laugh at the same time as challenging, because you suddenly realize you’ve got to compress a musical interpretation of an expression into less than five seconds,” McCartney explains. “It was like doing a huge crossword puzzle and coming up with all these solutions. And at the same time, it was musical, so it was great practice for me in the studio.”
As for the emotions that the emojis capture – well, some of them were a bit more difficult than others. “There were a couple that were more challenging; ‘flirting’ and ‘blushing,’” he says. “But I just kind of had a go at it and thought, ‘There you go!’ And then if I didn’t think it was enough, I might just add another instrument to try and get the feeling.”
McCartney has been busy working on all manner of interesting new projects lately. Last year, the 73-year-old appeared on three Kanye West tracks, one of which (“All Day”) is nominated for a Grammy. When he catches his breath, he’ll hopefully announce another tour.
