GTA 6 Music Explained: The Album, Justice’s Score and the Radio Dial Are Three Different Things

GTA 6’s music comes in three separate pieces, and people keep mixing them up. There’s an album you can buy, a score you’ll hear in the game, and a radio dial you’ll drive around with. They have different people behind them and different release plans. Rockstar has also been careful about which piece each announcement belongs to. Here is how they fit together, using Rockstar’s own words first.

Layer one: The Album

Rockstar’s Newswire, September 17: “Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album, the upcoming official soundtrack album created in partnership with Atlantic Records and launching November 19 alongside Grand Theft Auto VI, is available to pre-save on all major music streaming services” (Official). It has 34 original tracks. Nine singles are out, including Justice’s. The full list is on our album page (Official).

The album is a record, not a playlist of the game. Rockstar hasn’t said whether album songs play on the in-game stations (Not confirmed). One more thing worth knowing: the album comes on vinyl and CD, but the game’s physical edition doesn’t come on a disc. Rockstar Support says of the physical edition: “A disc will not be included in the box.” (Official).

Layer two: Justice’s score

Rockstar calls Justice the “original score composers” on its Launch Trailer page (Official). Their first piece is “Flower in a Hurricane,” featuring Tame Impala, SZA and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. No date has been given for a standalone score album (Not confirmed). Details: Justice score.

Stereogum heard the track as “an ’80s-style synth-rock anthem with a dramatic opening-riff moment that reminds me of Dire Straits’ ‘Money For Nothing’” (Reported). Justice push back on the retro label. Gaspard Augé, on BBC Radio 1, as reported by GameSpot: “We never really put words on it. ‘Oh, we need to make an ’80s track.’ We knew what we needed to do, and it happened to have this kind of flavor. But at the same time, the sounds are futuristic. Like the guitar, it’s not even a guitar; it’s a synth” (Reported).

On the hype, Augé said: “we see this colossus approaching, and at the same time we see it a bit from the outside.” On the guests, Xavier de Rosnay said: “These are people we’ve always wanted to work with… all of a sudden we had made a record with all of them” (Reported). GameSpot says the track passed 2.8 million YouTube plays in under a week (Reported). Why Justice are a break from Rockstar’s scoring history: our Justice longread.

Layer three: the dial and the podcasts

On October 8 Rockstar named six stations: Cocoteo FM, Back Country Radio, AfroBank FM, The Chamber 106.6, Flash FM and Dirty South Classics. As VGC put it, these are “six of the stations in the game,” not the whole dial (Official). Rockstar also announced on-demand podcasts, a first for the series, and said radio and podcasts now work on foot through headphones or earbuds connected to the character’s phone (Official).

IGN printed Rockstar’s station copy with voice credits. Back Country Radio has MW (voiced by Morgan Wallen) and Delta Dawne (voiced by Lana Del Rey), with “swamp meteorologist” Mud Dog Mike (voiced by Jeremy Dufrene). The Chamber 106.6 has DJ Kerry and DJ Tom (Kerry King and Tom Araya). Flash FM has Robyn “voiced by herself” and Alex (Alex Consani) (Reported). Consequence and The FADER list Bad Bunny, Burna Boy and Trina among the hosts too (Reported). Rockstar’s station copy uses character names, so we keep the celebrity credits as Reported. The station-by-station breakdown is on our radio page.

Is V-Rock back? Is Vice City FM a station? Neither is among the six Rockstar named (Not confirmed). A Vice City FM sticker turned up in Kaseya Center marketing, but that is an ad, not a station list.

What We Don’t Know

• The full 34-track album list.
• How many stations are on the dial, and what is on them.
• Podcast titles and hosts.
• The title, date and tracklist of Justice’s score album.
• Whether album songs play on the radio.

More: The album · Justice score · Trailer songs · Radio · Soundtrack · Radio explained.

Sources: Rockstar Newswire, Sep 17 · rockstargames.com/VI/music · Rockstar Support, editions · VGC, Oct 8 · GameSpot, Oct 20 · Stereogum, Oct 15 · IGN, Oct 8 · Consequence, Oct 8 · The FADER, Oct 8.

Official Grand Theft Auto VI Launch Trailer, featuring Justice’s “Flower in a Hurricane.”