Netflix unveils Beatles-themed series, McCartney records Skype emojis

Netflix unveils Beatles-themed series, McCartney records Skype emojis

There are a couple of interesting Beatles-themed news items this morning. 

Netflix has unveiled a new original children’s series called Beat Bugs. The series will showcase the adventures of a group of bugs, and each episode will be focused around one song by The Beatles, covered by a contemporary artist or personality (Eddie Vedder, Sia, P!nk and James Corden have already signed up. 

The project was slow getting off the ground purely due to the complexities licensing the Beatles’ catalogue. The show was created by filmmaker Josh Wakley, and he hadn’t quite taken into account how long the rights clearing process would be. 

However, the series has now secured the rights to use 300 songs, and 50 tracks will be used for the first two series. For Beatles-loving parents, a series introducing their kids to the Beatles catalogue will be a dream come true (and here’s to hoping the cover versions are bearable…). 

In other news, probably much less heartwarming news for Beatles fans, but perhaps a reason to rejoice for emoji lovers, Skype has launched a line of romance-themed emojis (Love Mojis) just in time for Valentine’s Day, set to music composed and recorded by Sir Paul McCartney (who presumably received an unmentionable amount of money for the trouble).  

As you can see in the video below, McCartney seemed to have a grand old time recording them, and although the news headline may see some Beatles fans die a little inside, in fairness the results are fairly cute. McCartney stated on his own site:

“It turned out to be a great laugh at the same time as challenging because you suddenly realise you’ve got to compress a musical interpretation of an expression into less than five seconds. 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.”

 

(Andrea Leonelli)