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" Still Alive" is the song that plays over the closing credits of the 2007 video game Portal. 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. Two Valve developers commissioned a song by Coulton, a fan of Valve's Half-Life series, which is set in the same universe as Portal. The song was released on The Orange Box Soundtrack on December 21, 2007, along with an exclusive vocal mix not heard in the game.
The song plays after GLaDOS is defeated by protagonist Chell. Its lyrics, which are displayed on what appears to be a computer console, reveal that GLaDOS is, in fact, "still alive". The song received praise for its humor 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 that showcased the musical works of video games. It was released as a free downloadable song for the Rock Band music game series on April 1, 2008. A rerecorded version, with Sara Quin on lead vocals, appears on Coulton's 2011 album Artificial Heart.
"Still Alive" is sung from the perspective of GLaDOS, used as the song that runs over the game's credits. At 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 by GLaDOS, eventually defeated her. However, the song disputes this, with GLaDOS asserting that she is "still alive" and that the experience had been a "huge success". She also references the Combine invasion of Earth in the Half-Life series.
The song is also present as a samba instrumental version through in-game radios at certain points in the game. On 9 December 2022, the Portal 2 Soundtrack was updated, now including this instrumental and the original raw, unfiltered music. The unfiltered version was also featured in Portal RTX.
When Coulton began work on a theme for the Portal-connected 2015 video game Lego Dimensions, he exclaimed that the song was a "phenomenon ... out of control", and that the song benefited from the writing and its context in the game. He found composing the Lego Dimensions song, "You Wouldn't Know", easier to do once he accepted that he would not be able to make a song as big as "Still Alive" again.
McLain praised Coulton for capturing GLaDOS in the song. She debuted the song in live public performance at Anime Midwest in Chicago.
The song was called the most memorable moment of 2007 by Good Game, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation television series. It received the 2008 "Best Original Vocal - Pop Song" award by the Game Audio Network Guild.
Coulton experienced a surge in popularity after the release of Portal. It is credited with earning Coulton "cult status". Valve hired him to work on the soundtrack of the sequel, Portal 2.
The Press Start -Symphony of Games- performance received criticism from Video Game Music Online author Cedille, who felt that the lyrics sounded "childish" when translated into Japanese, and that the singer gave a "faceless performance" that made it "painful and dreadful". Cedille was appreciative of the efforts made to demonstrate Portal to Japanese audiences, but questioned the need to translate it into Japanese and feature a different singer. 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. Video Game Music Online critic Oliver Jia felt that the original version of "Still Alive" was one of the most memorable video game themes, but felt that the performance on the Video Games Live Level 3 album ruined it due both to the fact that they used a live recording that sounded worse than other songs on the album, but also due to the crowd singing and clapping along, making it sound "overly cheesy and poorly done".
The song is also present in Valve's zombie-themed Left 4 Dead 2, which can be selected to play on a jukebox in three different campaigns. The opening line for "Still Alive" ("This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.") was featured in the Valve game . This was thought to be an alternate reality game about a potential Portal sequel, but was later confirmed to just be an Easter egg. In the Portal game mod "Portal Prelude", a remix of "Still Alive" can be heard on several radios throughout the game, however, they are not performed by GLaDOS. The spin-off Bridge Constructor Portal features a cameo appearance of the song. 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". A special Microsoft Windows port of the Xbox Live Arcade title, Chime, includes "Still Alive" as an additional music stage for the game.
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