I donвЂ™t know when that will happen, but sometime soon IвЂ™m sure. I believe that Valve has some plans on making this track officially available through Steam and perhaps elsewhere, also maybe a version with me singing the song. Between her and the very strong writing behind her characterвЂ™s dialog, it was hard for me to not end up looking good in all this. EllenвЂ™s a classically trained soprano, and a very talented voice actress вЂ“ she has this character down perfectly, and she did a great job conveying emotion in a non-emotional way.

We all went into the studio to record her vocals, then did all the fancy computer sound things they do to make her sound like a computer voice. I recorded a version with some scratch vocals and we sent it to the voice actress who did that character in the game, Ellen McLain. (Or maybe I wrote the song that way so I could buy a ukulele, hard to say.) I bought my first ukulele specifically to record this song, it just seemed right for it. I got an advance copy of the game when it was nearly finished, played through it, talked with the writers, and tried to get inside this characterвЂ™s head as best I could. I write about that sort of thing all the time. The character is this hilarious passive aggressive personality, which is obviously a perfect subject for me. We got together to talk about a couple of ideas, and somehow we decided it would be a good idea for me to write a song in the voice of one of the characters in the game, something that would sort of tie up the story arc at the end. IвЂ™ve long been a fan of Half-Life, so I said yes yes yes. This all came about when a couple of Valve folks came to one of my shows in Seattle long ago, and followed up with me afterwards asking if IвЂ™d be interested in working with them in some capacity. The song is called вЂњStill AliveвЂќ and it plays as part of the end credits when you finish the game. The game is called Portal and it is awesome. I will avoid spoilers as much as possible here (though you should not read the lyrics if you really want to be surprised). But now that the game is out I will come clean and reveal the inside story. IвЂ™m loving all the swirling rumors and speculations, the secret extraction and youtubing.

Portal still alive mp3