I love that feeling when you’re in a car, your head filled with plans and worries, chatting away — and then an unexpected song comes on the radio and changes everything. For the next few minutes all plans are forgotten, all worries shoved aside. Suddenly, everyone in the car is silent and locked into their own internal worlds, hypnotized by the music and the scenery and the simple power of momentum.
This kind of experience is a huge part of the magic of having the radio on while driving. And it’s part of the magic of having the radio on while driving in Grand Theft Auto too. Even from the first installments, with their simple top-down cities, these games have understood that music shouldn’t just enhance an existing tone or add emphasis to a mission you’re already in.
Instead, they understand that sometimes the radio should sideswipe you. Sometimes it should pull you right out of your current agenda or your emerging plan, and it should suspend you in nothing but the music and the environment, and the new mood that has suddenly been created. This has been my theory for years, anyway, and recently I went into GTA 5 to test it out once more.
My wife, who is a GTA 5 superfan, headed into the game with me as we stole a car and set off across the streets of Los Santos. She helped me evade some early cops and then we turned on the radio. Listen.
Years ago, my mother used to tell us that there was only one radio station in Los Angeles, by which she meant KMET, the addled hom.