Still Alive
It was composed and arranged by Jonathan Coulton and was performed by Ellen McLain, who voiced the Portal antagonist and in-game singer of the song, GLaDOS.
The song was released on The Orange Box Soundtrack on December 21, 2007, along with an exclusive vocal mix not heard in the game.
It has been featured in multiple venues, including at the 2009 Press Start -Symphony of Games-, a yearly Japanese concert event that showcased the musical works of video games.
By this point, a few months before the release of The Orange Box, Valve's writers had created a large amount of backstory for GLaDOS and other aspects of Portal, which Coulton used to write the lyrics.
[3] As GLaDOS grew more important to Portal's story, McLain was asked to sing for the game, since she was a trained operatic soprano, given a scratch vocal version by Coulton.
[6] Kim Swift, lead designer of Portal, explained that the song was chosen to play during the credits because they wanted to leave players feeling happy.
[13][14] The song was called the most memorable moment of 2007 by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's television series, Good Game.
[21] In the book The Art of Videogames, author Grant Tavinor stated that while he was in hysterics by the song, he got the sense of artistic completion upon hearing it.
[28] The Covey remix in "The Greatest Video Game Music 2" album was considered a weaker song in said album, with fellow Video Game Music Online Jon Hammond finding the instrumental aspects nice, but feeling that Covey sounded like she was trying too hard to sing well, sacrificing the song's humor.
[31] Paste Magazine writer Nathan Spicer felt that it was a video game song that could be enjoyed regardless of someone's familiarity with Portal.
[38] A Christmas-themed remix of "Still Alive" was created for Valve's Aperture Science website, showing a moving image of the Weighted Companion Cube with a Santa Claus hat, ending with a message reading "HAPPY [HOLIDAY NAME HERE]".
[39] A special Microsoft Windows port of the Xbox Live Arcade title, Chime, includes "Still Alive" as an additional music stage for the game.
[49] Singer Mariko Otsuka performed the song at the 2009 Press Start -Symphony of Games-, a yearly Japanese concert that showcased the musical works of video games.
"Still Alive" was the first Western song to be performed at the show, which included a Japanese translation by Kazushige Nojima, a writer of several Final Fantasy games, and arrangement for the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Because Portal was relatively unknown in Japan, Masahiro Sakurai, director of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, demonstrated the game to the audience before the performance.
