Still Alive
| "Still Alive" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Ellen McLain from the album The Orange Box Soundtrack | |
| Released | 21 December 2007 |
| Format | CD |
| Recorded | 2007 |
| Length | 2:56 |
| Label | Valve Corporation |
| Writer(s) | Jonathan Coulton |
"Still Alive" is a song featured in the ending credits of the 2007 video game Portal. It was composed and arranged by Jonathan Coulton and was performed by Ellen McLain, while portraying the Portal character GLaDOS. The song originated in a meeting between two Valve Corporation developers and Coulton about him writing a song for the company, which Coulton accepted as he was a fan of Valve's Half-Life series.
The song plays during the end credits in-song in the form of a computer program, and plays after GLaDOS is defeated by Chell, the game's protagonist and player character, with the lyrics revealing that GLaDOS is, in fact, "still alive" and not angry with anything. The song received significant praise for its humour and the quality of its performance. It has been featured in multiple venues, including at the 2009 Press Start -Symphony of Games-, a yearly Japanese concert event to showcase the musical works of video games. It was also featured as a free downloadable song for the Rock Band series, originally released on 1 April 2008. A rerecorded version, with Sara Quin on lead vocals, appears on Coulton's 2011 album Artificial Heart. The sequel to Portal, Portal 2, also ended with a song written by Coulton and sung by McLain called "Want You Gone". The two collaborated on a third song, "You Wouldn't Know", as part of the game Lego Dimensions, which featured various characters and locations from Portal.
The song was released on The Orange Box Soundtrack on 21 December 2007, along with an exclusive vocal mix not heard in Portal.
The song "Still Alive" was written by Jonathan Coulton and performed by Ellen McLain for the Portal video game. McLain also provides the voice for GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence for the fictional Aperture Science Enrichment Center and the game's antagonist. "Still Alive" is sung from the perspective of GLaDOS and used as the song that runs over the game's credits. By the end of the game, Chell, the game's protagonist who has been misled and placed in life-threatening situations within the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, the setting of the game, by GLaDOS, will have finally encountered and defeated GLaDOS. However, the song and portions of post-credit scenes suggests that GLaDOS is still functional, and despite having been apparently destroyed by Chell, is "not even angry" at that prospect, having considered the monitoring of Chell's performance through the test chambers as a "huge success", regardless of the destruction caused by Chell and the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device being released into the outside world, for those that are "still alive". The Combine invasion of Earth from the Half-Life series was also hinted in the song by GLaDOS ("Go ahead and leave me, I think I'd prefer to stay inside. Maybe you'll find someone else to help you. Maybe Black Mesa. That was a joke. Ha Ha. Fat Chance."). The song itself is also present as a samba instrumental version through in-game radios at certain points within the game.
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