Justice are scoring GTA 6: what the duo has said, and why it is not an 80s pastiche

Fair warning: the facts here are Rockstar's and Justice's own. The reading of them is mine, and it is the reading of someone who has had Flower in a Hurricane on repeat for a week.

Here is the thing about GTA music. We talk about the radio. We remember Flash FM and Emotion 98.3 and the songs we sang in a stolen car. Almost nobody talks about the score, the music under the missions and the chases that tells you how to feel. This time Rockstar gave that job to Justice, and I think it is the most interesting creative choice in the whole launch. So let's.

What Rockstar says

Confirmed: on October 15, 2026, alongside the launch trailer, Rockstar named Justice, the French duo of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, as GTA 6's original score composers. Shacknews notes it is their first video game work.

Confirmed: the trailer's song is new. Flower in a Hurricane is Justice with Tame Impala, featuring SZA and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

Confirmed: Rockstar says more about an original score album is coming. No date. That is separate from [Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album](wiki/the-album.html), 34 new tracks with Atlantic Records, out November 19, the same day as the game.

What Justice have said

A few days after the announcement, the duo spoke to BBC Radio 1, as reported by GameSpot and others. Three things stood out to me.

• On the size of it. "We see this colossus approaching," as they put it. They know what they have signed up to. They also said they watched the game partly from the outside, which kept the hype from leaning on the music.
• On the 80s. Augé said they never set out to make an 80s pastiche. If it sounds like the 80s, that is where it landed, not what they aimed for.
• On the guitar. What sounds like a guitar is a synth. The sounds, they said, are meant to be futuristic.

And de Rosnay, on the collaborators: these were artists they had always wanted to work with, and the track came together bit by bit.

My read

I think the "not an 80s pastiche" line is the key to the whole game, and not just its music.

Vice City in 2002 was a costume party. Neon, shoulder pads, a radio full of real 80s hits, everybody in on the joke. It was wonderful and it was a museum. GTA 6 is set now. Leonida has phones, a social feed and people filming each other. If Rockstar had scored that with retro synthwave, it would have been nostalgia for a city that no longer exists. Hiring a duo whose whole sound is old machines played like the future is a way of saying: this is Vice City, but it is not 1986 any more.

Then there is the song itself. A flower in a hurricane is a fragile thing in a violent place. It is hard not to hear Lucia in that, fresh out of prison, with a plan, in the sunniest and most dangerous state in America. I wrote on Wednesday that she drives and he stays. The song sounds like her. SZA on the hook does not hurt. I am aware this is me reading a lot into a title. That is what titles are for.

What I want from the score is restraint. GTA's best moments have often been quiet: a drive at sunset, a phone call that goes wrong. Justice can do huge, and the trailer proves it. I hope they also get to do small.

What we do not know

How much of the game they scored, whether they wrote music for specific characters, and when the score album comes out. Rockstar has not said, and I will not guess at tracklists.

For the radio side, the six stations previewed so far are on the GTA 6 radio page, and the songs from every trailer are on the [trailer songs wiki](wiki/trailer-songs.html).

GTA 6 radio stations