Soundtracks is where we take a look back at the use of licensed music in games. Go here if you want to know more.

Today’s game needs no introduction, although it’s going to get one anyway, because that’s how these things work. Despite generally being regarded as part pastiche and a bit of a light-hearted laugh (by 00s video game standards), my own recent and first-time experiences of Vice City seemed tinged with a sense of melancholy for some reason.

Perhaps the inevitable consequences of 80s boom and bust, or of a lifestyle of criminal violence, add a sense of tragedy to the action, or maybe I just happened to experience a weird double-hopped nostalgia for the 80s as viewed through a 00s lens, and memories of Vice City as the must-play game of a certain time. Or maybe it’s because I chose to mainly listen to Emotion 98.3, the in-game radio station focused on overwrought power ballads and pop rock, who knows?

Anyway, despite some clunkiness, the game seemed to hold up pretty well. And, in contrast to the last title we covered in this series, it’s back to big-budget, no-expense-spared stuff in terms of the soundtrack, which is pretty much an 80s best of, spanning a wide range of artists and genres. In fact, the whole thing was actually released on CD back in the day.

These days, of course, licensing and rights issues have hobbled the various digital, ported and remastered versions of the game, with tracks from the original release being removed as a result. (I’ve got the original discs, though, because I’m a real gamer*).

[*Note for ‘real gamers’: this is a joke.]

If you were an expert on the 80s, and 80s music, it might be possible to quibble with the exact range of hits on offer here in terms of date of release, although to be fair nothing on the soundtrack trespasses beyond the year (1986) in which the game is meant to be set, so it doesn’t exactly stray into The Wedding Singer territory in terms of trying to cram in an entire decade of reference points. And you can’t really argue with the lengths they went to in order to get an authentic-sounding selection of music, which certainly adds to the game overall.
 

Herbie Hancock – Rockit
(Columbia, 1983)

Shamefully, I knew nothing about Herbie Hancock other than through this song which, although I’d love to say otherwise, just makes me think of the ending of Zoolander and its juxtaposition with a remix of Relax! by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

But to dismiss Rockit as a throwaway and superficial one-hit wonder of the 80s, as I did, gives little credit to Mr Hancock’s musical abilities or CV as a jazz musician who played with Miles Davis and seems to have remained prolific and active right through to the 2010s.

Anyway, to return to an appropriately flippant tone for this series, I think I still have a CD with this on that I borrowed from my friend Tony after he surprised me by revealing a misspent youth as part of a breakdancing troupe. Also, did I mention Zoolander?
 

Bryan Adams – Run To You
(A&M, 1984)

I know the Canadian government has apologised for Bryan Adams on several occasions, and deservedly so: my favourite (possibly apocryphal) Adams tale involves him being so annoyed by the noise from the pub next door to his new house in Chelsea, he bought it and shut it down.

But long before his 16-week denim-clad residency at the top of the UK pop charts and subsequent 90s Dad-rock material, 1984 album Reckless contained a number of veritable bangers, including ‘ironic’ school disco classic Summer of ’69, It’s Only Love (a seemingly little-remembered collaboration with Tina Turner) and Heaven (later converted into a catchy/annoying Eurodance hit in the early 00s for DJ Sammy, who repeated the trick with The Boys of Summer by Don Henley).

And there’s this one, of course, which has the perfect blend of echoey drums, twanging guitar and slightly excessive lyrical lusting to feature on a fictional radio station called Emotion 98.3. You can’t really imagine Bryan being a dirty dog in real life, but he manages to sell it here (in the song, if not the video).
 

Twisted Sister – I Wanna Rock
(Columbia, 1984)

The casting of 20-something actors in school and College movies seems perfectly understandable, although it does cause a slightly weird disconnect when you go to see one and you’re supposed to be the same age as the protagonists (and also 20 years later when you realise they’re all approaching 50).

In the year 2000, I went to see the film Road Trip, a comedy of the American Pie era (starring Stifler in a very Stifler-adjacent role) which I enjoyed at the time but am reluctant to revisit now in case it contains multiple crimes against what is generally considered to be moral and correct (as I’m sure it probably does).

At some point, the characters bond while singing I Wanna Rock, which, as noted above, was a hit in 1984. Now, I know people can latch onto hits from a previous era, but even at the time, I thought, am I supposed to know about Twisted Sister in the year 2000?

(See also: Freddie Prinze, Jr. singing Whitesnake in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer).

As for the song, if you looked up Hair Metal in the dictionary, you’d find this.
 

John Waite – Missing You
(EMI, 1984)

And if you looked up ‘yearning 80s guitar ballad’, you’d probably find this. Name me a better song to conjure up images of being glum and alone in a house, staring out of the window with rain pouring down outside, thinking of mistakes made and relationships lost, and I’ll congratulate you for being someone who actually knows about music instead of someone who writes on a blog about game soundtracks, with only a sketchy knowledge of around 15 years of chart history and Wikipedia to rely upon.

Missing You was included on the fourth instalment of the famous UK compilation series, Now That’s What I Call Music (subsequently shortened to Now, with headphone-wearing pig DJ mascot also long since discarded), which was one of the only records available during a family stay in a Spanish villa in the late 80s, and was therefore played to death (other tracks included Limahl’s Never Ending Story and Ghostbusters by Ray Parker, Jr.) – giving this track extra nostalgia points.

I’d never actually seen the video until now, and had always imagined some kind of brooding night-time affair with the window/rain scenario described above and/or John Waite driving a car somewhere while looking sad and lost.

Unfortunately the real thing is a disappointingly hammy effort, with highlights including John amusing his (now ex) girlfriend by failing to lean on a lighting stand during a photo shoot in which she is starring (later revealed to be as part of an advertising campaign for straws – yes, straws); John half-heartedly shrugging off some equally half-hearted flirting from a woman in a bar; and John becoming so frustrated while using a payphone he smashes the receiver into a fine powder.
 

Squeeze – Tempted
(A&M, 1981)

It might not be entirely fair, but the first fact that always comes to mind about the band Squeeze was that Jools Holland used to be their keyboard player. Yes, Jools Holland, he of the long-running, late-night live music show and increasingly reviled New Year’s Hootenanny (never the Hootenanny, we’re better than that).

In the 90s, I watched the show for the live performances, despite the often annoying interjections of the host (a taste of which featured in the very first Soundtracks piece here), who seemed to enjoy wheeling up his piano to the side of the stage to provide an unsolicited contribution to a hot new rock band’s hit single, which was then rendered largely redundant once the loud guitars kicked in.

(Whether he actually did this on a regular basis or not, I don’t know, but it happened often enough for my sister and I to perform ever more ludicrous impressions of Jools trying to accompany extremely unsuitable bands with discordant boogie-woogie piano, kind of like those bits on the short-lived Ali G chat show where he’d drown out Travis with blasts of jungle music).

Anyway, Jools had left Squeeze just before this became a hit, replaced on keyboards by Paul Carrack, who also provided vocals here, before he left the band to pursue various other musical endeavours, including Mike and the Mechanics (ask your Dad. If he doesn’t know, ask my Dad).
 

Jan Hammer – Crockett’s Theme
(MCA, 1986)

Miami Vice is one of those TV shows I never saw at the time and hence only really know through subsequent parodies and references in other TV shows and films (and games). As such, I tend to forget that it was supposed to be a fairly straight cop show and taken seriously by adults (as were, I suppose, things like Airwolf and Knight Rider).

I still find it hard to do so, despite the 2006 movie which couldn’t possibly have taken itself more seriously if it tried, and the sight in this clip (chosen here ahead of the official video, which features no footage from the show) of Don Johnson climbing a fence while wearing a white linen suit is enough to undermine any sense of drama despite the moodiness of the music, which seems to have aged surprisingly well by comparison, and is certainly a suitable accompaniment to Tommy Vercetti riding a motorbike over a bridge while the sun sets.

While playing the game, this instrumental seemed all too familiar to me despite never having seen the series in which it featured. It turns out that it was also used in a series of UK adverts for Natwest Bank in the early 90s, which is probably why I always half-expect a voiceover about interest rates or savings accounts to follow the first few bars. (Although upon further investigation, they seem to be more of a phoney behind the scenes/people who work here/you can trust us type affair than adverts for any service in particular).

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More than any other game in this series, there are loads of other good tracks I could have chosen here, and this sample isn’t necessarily representative, but there you go.

A touch of ‘real’ music, as the oldies might have it, before we go back to the random miscellany of noisy tunes that accompanied racing games in the 00s.

Looking forward to it? I’ll see you then!