Love is a Long Road: What does Tom Petty's song in the GTA 6 trailer tell us about Rockstar's new game?

The GTA 6 trailer is here, and it's underscored by Tom Petty's 1989 anthem Love is a Long Road - so what does that let us glean about what to expect from Rockstar's new game?

Well let's start with the song itself. Petty was perhaps at the height of his power in 1989, and that's certainly a way that Rockstar might view itself in 2023. But he was also going solo for the first time on Full Moon Fever, the debut album that Love is a Long Road appears on - perhaps Rockstar also noting a desire to change things up off the back of the long-running success of GTA 5. 

The use of an 80s rock anthem is also an interesting choice - there's a note of nostalgia there, and also an arrow back in time to the original Vice City games, which were set in 1984 and 1986. Of course, it's worth noting that it's the perfect choice for a game that will see its fair share of cruising down sun-drenched highways - in 2020, guitarist and co-writer Mike Campbell, on a list of Petty's best songs, described how the song was partly inspired by his motorcycle for Rolling Stone.

To take a look at the lyrics, there are also several ways that Love is a Long Road relates to the mood of the GTA 6 trailer. "There was a girl I knew," Petty opens, pointing to the Bonnie and Clyde-style relationship of the GTA 6 characters, one of which is the series' first female protagonist, a Latin American woman, Lucia. Lucia's relationship with her male counterpart is clearly romantic, and if it's anything like her real-world inspiration, probably doomed - Petty sings in the past tense about this love, and the desperation he mentions in the chorus is somewhat echoed by the shots of Lucia and her partner together.

To take those ideas further, there's certainly an idea of an attempt at redemption - an obvious theme of Rockstar's given the Red Dead games, but also one found throughout GTA. Characters like Franklin, Niko, Vince, and many more are often, at least partly, using crime as a means to separate themselves from more crime. 

Ending on a simple note, this is a song about cars and driving, and living hard in a somewhat apathetic world. There's certainly a depth to Rockstar's choice here, but there's also a beautifully obvious reason to draw on Petty, and it'll be fascinating to see what else the game's music has to say over the next couple of years.

A GTA 6 PC release is in doubt, as Rockstar confirms the game for PS5 and Xbox Series X, but nothing else.