How Gran Turismo Changed My Life

8 July 2025

No, the title isn't a joke. I mean it. This game about racing cars changed my entire life. To tell this story, I need to go way back in time, 1998. Imagine if you will, a kid who was raised in a very religious household but was allowed to have some video games. All I had at the time was a Sega Genesis and a few games for it. We were always poor so getting a new video game was a once a year thing maybe for Christmas or my birthday. Eventually in 1998, I get gifted a PS1 as a combined gift from my Mom and grandparents paying for one, and I get a Crash Bandicoot game. Little Mike is enjoying 3D gaming, it's so cool!

Then a little later that year, my step-dad at the time comes home with a game that just came out. He gives it to me as a gift as says "I know you like racing and cars, so have fun." He was right, I do like cars and racing. So I excitedly put that disc into my PS1, and I want you to imagine, at the time, a 10 year old kid seeing this intro I'm going to link. Pay attention to it. 

It's glamour shots of cars, what's the big deal? How did this change your life Mike? Well my fine reader I just made up to move this silly intro along, did you hear it? The song? It's a song called Everything Must Go (The Chemical Brothers Remix) by the Manic Street Preachers. That was the first time I can remember listening to a song that wasn't religious, country, or both. I was amazed music could sound like that. It was so different, it had a beat, the instruments were all digital and weird and the lyrics, well they made no sense to me at the time, but they weren't about god or tending to the farm. My brain exploded. 

Yes, Gran Turismo changed my life because it was the first game I ever owned that had a licensed soundtrack of music that wasn't approved by my mother. She had no clue. I loved every bit of it I could get. It opened my eyes up to a world of music I didn't know existed. Funny enough, a year later, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater would do the same thing for me but with punk rock. But this isn't about you Tony!

I just wanted to share a few songs that were in Gran Turismo and how it lead me to love certain genres of music so much, and even becoming a 20+ year fan of these bands and songs. First let me introduce you to a band that was heavily featured on the GT1 soundtrack, Cubanate.

This song, Skeletal, introduced me to industrial metal. Of course, at the time I had no idea that was even what the genre was called. Kid me just wanted to bang my head to the beat and the sick guitar riffs. Later on in life I found this song had vocals but for some reason they weren't in the game. Still, imagine some religious kid hearing this for the first time and wondering why this music was being kept from me. Again, it was life changing for me. Thinking back on this, yes I was that sheltered from things. Eventually that would change when I became a teenager and started making friends who were skaters and goths. You learn so much from them.

Moving on, I guess my real first introduction to punk was technically in this game as well. Though it's more pop-punk in my opinion, but again, at the time, I didn't even know what a punk was. Here is a little ear worm of a song called Lose Control by Ash.

Now in my memory, this was the first song in the game where I tried to figure out what the lyrics were. Remember, I'm just a stupid kid. So I sang along with it not realizing it's a song about the singer being lead on by someone and that they keep going for another guy and he's so frustrated about it. I just heard something about it being night and in my kid brain, yeah night rules, I can drive a car at night in the game! Wow! Once again, I would understand when I was older, but the song has stuck with me for this long, so it clearly made an impact even back then.

I won't bore you to death with going over every song in the soundtrack. I just want to talk about the few that really stuck with me all these years later. The one song I really want to bring up however introduced me to a band that has been in my heart since I was I've become a lifelong fan. Every time they release new music to this day, you can see me posting about it on my social media. It's a little song called As Heaven Is Wide by Garbage.

This time, the lyrics to me were clear as day. I panicked back then. If my mom heard this song, that's it, the game was over. Anytime the song came on and she was near the TV, I would mute the TV. The song says they want to burn in hell and they want to run away from God! Oh no! I'm going to get grounded! The song however is so damn good. Once I got a little older, I started thinking about it more and more. I would pop the game in just to hear it, because of course I wasn't allowed to own much music on CD. My first album was Sabrina The Teenage Witch's tv show OST (A banger of a soundtrack by the way) at 12 years old, safe to say Garbage was not allowed in the house. 

The song talks about how God is overhyped and will let you down. To a young teenage me, that hit me hard. That's the first time I ever thought maybe this religion thing isn't all that it's cracked up to be. That lead me down a rabbit hole of studying every religion I could find in public libraries and finding out nearly every single one loved killing people for wars in the name of saying their god was better. Basically, Garbage was the band that taught me religion is a bunch of bullshit and I wanted out. You add to that I became a Punk Rock lover at 12 years old, and I was set on this path of thinking for myself and not letting religion lie to me anymore. It was life changing. Once I was 18 and allowed to be an adult, I was done. I cut ties with the church I was part of and never looked back. 

Thanks Gran Turismo! You ruined a nice religious boy! Video games are actually the work of Satan! They were right all along! Don't even get me started when I got a copy of Sled Storm for the PS1 and heard Rob Zombie for the first time in my life and then heard the exact same Rob Zombie song in Gran Turismo 2, which I thought was the coolest song ever made. Sled Storm also introduced me to Econoline Crush, another one of my favorite bands ever, but maybe I'll talk about Sled Storm another day.

I'm sure my story isn't original or unique when it comes to learning about the world of music from video games. It's sure a lot easier for kids these days to listen to licensed songs in games. Say what you will about Fortnite, but I'm sure glad it's introducing kids to music I grew up with. A younger family member I got to meet for the first time recently heard I liked games and talked to me about Fortnite, and I'll never forget them saying "Rob Zombie is so cool. Do you know who that is? He's in Fortnite." 

That's how I got inspired to sit down and write this. It's taken me a bit to actually write it down, life can sure get in the way of doing something as simple as this blog post. It was just so amazing to see a kid at the age I was discovering the music I grew up with and happy to know I understood. I think they are gonna turn out fine. 

I don't really have a good ending for this short blog post. Music is so important to me and I will never shut up about Garbage. No seriously, Garbage released a new album this year and it's so damn good. You should listen to it. Right now. Stop reading this garbage and go listen to Garbage!

Heh, puns.