With the highly anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI on November 19 fast approaching, you can’t fault folks for pouring over that Extended Look for frayed ends, hoping to be the first to unravel the mysteries awaiting us in Vice City. In the weeks since the trailer’s release, one portion of the extended look in particular has been clipped and shared across your timelines: the final montage, with the monologue about “the salad years” and this being the best time of your life, right now.
If you haven’t seen it (or have and are still in your feels), give it a spin:
The song that plays under that speech is key; there’s something about the way that intro underscores the imagery and that speech; who’s cutting onions!? The song used is actually a collaboration between Elderbrook and the duo known as Bob Moses titled “Inner Light,” which they released in 2021, a little over five years before the release of the trailer. (“Yeah, that was all planned,” Elderbrook jokes. “That was all planned.”)
According to Billboard, “Inner Light” shot to the top of Shazam’s United States Top 200 chart with a 462 percent increase in plays, likely due to the 694,000 streams that came in after the Extended Look for Grand Theft Auto VI. That’s serious motion, and unexpected motion, as Elderbrook and Bob Moses’ Tom Howie relayed to Complex. “I was actually on a long flight from LA to Poland,” Elderbrook remembers, “It didn't have any internet, so I landed, and I checked my phone, and I'm hearing from people I haven't spoken to in over 10 years, like my college friends that I have no connection with at all. They're saying, ‘Oh my God, you're in GTA.’ I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that.’ And then it suddenly clicked. ‘Yeah, they paid to use the song a while ago, and now they've used it.’”
In these situations, artists may not know how their song would be used. “I honestly didn't really even know that it was going to be in the trailer at all,” Elderbrook admits. “The fact that they actually put it in, you never know. It's all very last minute and secretive.” Howie remembers “getting the same thing a couple months ago being like, ‘oh, they're going to use it in the GTA game.’ And I was like, ‘oh, sick, that'll be big.’ But we didn't know. Basically, you never know what these things are until they're released. We didn't know that they were going to give us basically the best sync you could ask for.”
Interestingly, neither Howie nor Elderbrook are big gamers or into GTA; Howie noted that his partner in Bob Moses, Jimmy Vallance (who couldn’t make the call), “dons the head of video game nerd with extreme pride,” adding that “he's very up on it and I think he was really excited about it.”
Even more interesting? “Inner Light” wasn’t something they had a plan for; it started as a record Elderbrook and Bob Moses first worked on over Zoom. “We made it in the pandemic, what, six years ago,” Elderbrook remembers. “Released it five years ago. For me, it's always one of the biggest songs streaming and also specifically with my live shows, it's the song that everybody absolutely loves.”
Howie shared similar sentiments. “It was our biggest streaming song for sure, and one of our biggest. It was definitely a highlight in the show, depending on where you were especially, like we say, it's a hit for us. When we're playing our show and that song comes on, people are really into it and it's always fun. And if we're DJing or we're doing something like that and we're maybe not sure if the crowd's really feeling it, when we play [“Inner Light”], ‘all right, we got them.’ So it's a bit of a weapon.
“I think, making it in COVID,” Howie continues, “this has just proven to me that you just got to focus on what you can control. We were joking, there's probably a bunch of music industry execs in some room right now being like, ‘All right, let's analyze this song and this placement. How did they roll that out, and how did they do that? Let's try and recreate it and really do all that they know is it was just a massive fluke.’ All we did was just do our best, the same thing we try to do every day. We show up to the studio, and we try to write the best tunes we can. And sometimes, most of the time, we suck, and sometimes we're really good, and I don't know why.”
Recently, Elderbrook shared a new rendition of “Inner Light” on socials, and it sounds like fans of the combination of Elderbrook and Bob Moses may be in for a treat. “I think we're going to get back in the studio,” Elderbrook confirms. “That's always on the docket anyways,” Howie says. “We both tour a lot because in this day and age you kind of have to, and also we love it, but in the craziness of our schedules, it's always hard to find the right time to do it. And this was just a good reminder. We'd always been like, ‘Oh, we'll do something more with Alex whenever it would work.’ I would choose that on the menu any day, but this is a good reminder that the Elderbrook Bob Moses is on special, and we should partake.”
You can stream “Inner Light” wherever good music can be heard; Elderbook’s latest single, “Never Get Enough,” is out now. Rockstar Games also announced a GTA VI album, featuring new Travis Scott.
