why i love grand ThefT auTo’S muSic

right the game’s music helps set the tone for your own personal experience.

Celebrating the iconic tunes and varied artists that have brought Rockstar’s worlds vividly to life Samuel RobeRtS

PubliSheR RockstaR Games / DeveloPeR RockstaR NoRth / foRmat XboX 360/XboX oNe / ReleaSe Date septembeR 2013

In 1991, Rockstar Games co-founder Sam Houser began his career at the now-defunct BMG Records, working on pop videos and VHS releases. BMG eventually established an interactive division, and in 1996, Houser became its head of development. The first GTA was released in the UK in 1997, and in 1998, BMG Interactive was sold to a small distributor and publisher, Take

Two. Houser moved to New York, and extremely effective. Tracks like ‘Every set up Rockstar Games in late 1998. In Picture Tells A Story’ by Rod Stewart a weird way, it makes sense that part and ELO’s ‘Evil Woman’ – music that of GTA’s origin is in music – it’s always your dad might have on vinyl – sat been vital to how these worlds feel. alongside Kanye West’s ‘Flashing

The original Xbox’s Vice City was a Lights’ and ‘Hip Hop’ by Joell Ortiz. The huge moment for the series when it jazz station seems to play the exact came to music. While GTA III’s brilliant music that was on in my cab when I soundtrack featured lesser known first went to New York ten years ago. artists, Vice City had station after Each station offers you a different lens station of tracks that my mum used with which to experience Liberty City. to like. In choosing to make a period piece – an ‘80s-set crime romp in a Miami analogue – Rockstar used the music to bring the world to life. When Tommy Vercetti stepped into a car and ‘Billie Jean’ by Michael Jackson played on the in-game radio, nothing like that had happened in games before.

Since then, of course, Rockstar Bringing us up to the present, kept picking choices that complement there were 241 licensed songs in the setting. In the ‘90s-set San the original release of GTA V on 360, Andreas, the station Radio Los then even more in the Xbox One Santos featured the likes of version. I started with the Ice Cube and Dr Dre, artists radio station Non-Stop that encapsulated the Pop and its unashamedly atmosphere that the (and surprisingly British) developer wanted to line-up of All Saints’ tap into. And yet, once ‘Pure Shores’ and Misyou got out of the city Teeq’s ‘Scandalous’, and into Bone County, among others. Then the default radio stations I graduated to the began to change to country trendier Radio Mirror music. The developers were Park, where Miami Horror’s using music to convey a sense ‘Sometimes’ led to me buying their of distance in this virtual world, to debut album, Illumination. That led make you believe there are different to me buying every release of theirs cultural tastes in a place that’s about up until this point, including remixes a three-minute drive in real time from and covers. And from there, I started where you started. listening to new wave music almost Back to the present every day, before branching out into different genres. In GTA IV, Rockstar returned to a Rockstar has become a tastemaker contemporary New York-infused when it comes to music – chances setting. The mix of old and new is are you’ll always know something on the in-game radio, but you’ll leave the game loving a few tracks you’d never even heard before playing. I personally feel like I don’t get a lot of exposure to modern music outside of what Spotify thinks I want to hear, and GTA is the single biggest influence on my tastes. When asked about how GTA shaped the 2011 movie Drive, Rockstar’s Dan Houser commented on the first time he noticed the series seeping into

“You’ll leave the game loving a few tracks you’d never even heard before playing”

the public consciousness. “It’s similar to when Vice City came out,” he told The Guardian in 2013. “I was driving in England on a Friday night, stuck on the M25 listening to Pete Tong,

Sing it back and there were about six songs in a row from the soundtrack. I thought, In Vice City, the fictional Scottish band Love Fist has two songs on ‘Wow, games are beginning to have an influence.’” Given the station V-Rock – the far-reaching success of ‘Dangerous Bastard’ and GTA, it’s no surprise, really. ‘Fist Fury’, alongside tracks by real bands like Anthrax and Slayer. GTA is fundamentally a game about stealing cars and firing guns in gorgeously-realised locations, and the use of music has been as important to its evolution as anything else. It brings these worlds to life, evoking times and places that enhance the way we experience them. And that aside, Rockstar is able to remind us that ‘Glamorous’ by Fergie is an absolute banger. n

ABOVE having access to the radio in gtA Online is a nice bonus.