GTA 6 NEWS · SOUNDTRACK & STREAMING
“Devil Woman” Is Up 325% Thanks to GTA 6 — and 86-Year-Old Cliff Richard Thinks It’s a Game Show
The strangest GTA 6 story of the week belongs to a 1976 pop song and the 86-year-old man who made it. As IGN reports, British icon Cliff Richard is enjoying an improbable career resurgence after his half-century-old single “Devil Woman” soundtracked the GTA 6 Extended Look on Netflix — and in a new interview, he cheerfully admits he has no idea what Grand Theft Auto actually is.
The essentials: “Devil Woman” (1976) featured in the Netflix Extended Look and has since seen a 325% increase in daily streams, with tracking sites reporting an even larger overall surge. In an interview with The Times, Richard revealed he didn’t know what GTA was — asking whether “the show is a game show.” His nephew’s kids found out before he did, screaming “Dad, it’s Uncle Cliff!” at the television. Rockstar, meanwhile, is presumably quite happy with its licensing fee. Here is the full story of how a game that doesn’t launch until November 19 just bent Spotify’s charts around a song older than most GTA players’ parents.
What Happened: One Netflix Placement, One Very Big Spike
“Devil Woman” is a 1976 single from Richard’s album I’m Nearly Famous, and this is not its first sync-placement bump: it got a lift from the 2017 film I, Tonya. But as IGN notes, nothing compares to GTA 6. Since the Extended Look premiered on Netflix, the song has seen a 325% increase in daily streams. NME reports the surge is driven by Gen Z listeners discovering the track for the first time, and RockstarINTEL’s tracking of the Spotify data puts the song’s overall growth at 1,290% — part of a soundtrack-wide wave that lifted plays of Extended Look songs by more than a hundred thousand streams.
If you missed it, the Extended Look was Netflix’s extended GTA 6 showcase, and we catalogued every song in it when it dropped — from Phil Collins and Cliff Richard to Sexyy Red and Kodak Black. The soundtrack reveal ran both directions in time: golden-oldies rubbing shoulders with contemporary names like Yung Lean and Travis Scott, which is exactly the GTA radio formula. Vice City has always been a city where 1976 and 2026 play on the same block.
The Extended Look itself has become a travelling event — screened at PlayStation’s immersive Tokyo Game Show booth (the same venue where the free GTA 6 shirts got scalped within minutes) before landing on Netflix, where it sparked a viewership spike so sharp the streamer’s app briefly wobbled. Every re-airing sends another wave of listeners running the soundtrack back. That is the machine working exactly as Rockstar built it: the company does not simply license songs, it stages them — and the staging is what turns a 1976 single into a 2026 chart movement.
“The Show Is a Game Show, Isn’t It?”
The best part of this story is Richard’s own version of it, told to The Times and quoted by IGN. On learning his song was in one of the biggest entertainment products on the planet: “I was told this happened!” His nephew, who has two boys, told him the kids came screaming to him — “Dad, it’s Uncle Cliff!” — because, as Richard puts it, “They didn’t realise I could sing like that. The show is a game show, isn’t it, really? One of the biggest on TV?”
IGN gently notes that he got the word “game” right, which feels like the correct amount of credit. And to be fair to the man: from the outside, a product that premieres trailers on Netflix, puts up mysterious Spotify billboards, and turns burger joints into theme park attractions probably does look more like a television event than a piece of software. The distinction between “game” and “show” has honestly never been blurrier than it is with GTA 6.
Richard, for his part, is taking the resurgence with grace. “People will no longer just say, ‘Oh, Cliff Richard is from the past,’” he told The Times. “Because I am, but that past is what makes everything what it is today.” It is hard to argue with him — that sentence is basically Rockstar’s entire musical thesis statement.
What This Means for GTA 6
1. GTA 6 is now the most powerful sync placement in music. A single placement in a promotional video outperformed an Oscar-buzzed feature film for the same song. Labels have understood this since GTA 5’s radio stations made careers, but the Netflix Extended Look just demonstrated it with a fifty-year-old single and a measurable 325% daily-stream spike. Expect every artist’s team on Earth to be angling for a slot on the official soundtrack.
2. The generational crossover is working exactly as designed. The surge is being driven by Gen Z listeners — kids hearing “Devil Woman” for the first time inside a game their older siblings pre-ordered. That is the Vice City radio magic: old music made new by context. Rockstar already announced a 34-track original soundtrack album alongside the game, and Richard’s resurgence is a free preview of what those track reveals will do to streaming charts.
3. The licensing bill for this game must be astronomical. IGN notes Rockstar paid out to feature the song — multiply that across hundreds of licensed tracks, a 34-song original album with real-world artists, and the biggest marketing campaign in gaming history. It is a reminder that GTA 6 is not just a game launch; it is a music-industry event with a game attached.
4. Expect the full effect on November 19. Streaming spikes from trailers and marketing fades; streaming spikes from a game people play for hundreds of hours compound. When millions of players actually cruise Leonida with the radio on, the “Devil Woman” bump of October 2026 will look like a warm-up lap. If you want to be part of the cohort that finds out in real time, you can still pre-order GTA 6 for PS5 on Amazon or lock in the Xbox Series X|S version here.
The Bottom Line
A 1976 single is up 325% on daily streams because of a video game, the 86-year-old who recorded it thinks that game is a television game show, and somehow he is also completely right about why it works — the past is what makes everything what it is today. Only GTA 6 can generate a story this absurd and this wholesome in the same headline. Three weeks and change until November 19, when we find out what the full soundtrack does to the charts.
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Related reading: Every song in the Extended Look · The 34-track GTA 6 album · Rockstar’s Spotify billboard tease · The complete pre-order guide