By JoCo • April 29, 2011

Much to my delight and relief, people seem to be enjoying the song I did for Portal 2. There’s no question that Still Alive was a hard act to follow, not necessarily because the song was so great, but more because the overall experience of the game turned it into such a well-known and widely appreciated cultural moment. Thank goodness I didn’t totally blow it!

I’m getting lots of questions on Twitter and in emails, so this is an attempt to answer some of them in one fell swoop. Ready?

Can I buy this song anywhere?

Not as of this writing, and I don’t know when you will be able to. The song and the recording are owned by Valve, so I’m not at all involved with what happens to it next. I happen to know that they’re planning on putting out a sound track, more than likely it will be on iTunes and Amazon and other places just like the sound track for the first Portal. But I don’t know when that will be – I’ve heard them say “soon.”

What about Rock Band? A karaoke version? Source tracks for remixes?

See above – not up to me. I hope that Valve will do all these things though.

This is under Creative Commons like all your other stuff right? So I cover this song? Create a parody? Make a video?

It is not under Creative Commons. Technically you would have to get permission from Valve to do something with it. In the past they’ve not seemed to mind all the crazy things people did with Still Alive, so if I had to guess (and I do), I would say that as long as you weren’t profiting from it in some way, they’d generally be supportive of fan-created stuff. But this is not legal advice, and I certainly can’t give you (or refuse you) permission to do anything.

Are you going to release your own version with you singing, the way you did with Still Alive?

I might. In fact I have permission to do that from Valve. I’m not yet sure what form that would take – the new song is so much more dependent on the arrangement and all the electronics that I haven’t quite figured out another way to make it work. But you’ll be sure to know when that happens, because I will tell you. I am finishing up a new recording of Still Alive that I did in the studio with the new band, with guest vocalist Sara Quin from Tegan and Sara, keyboards from Loser’s Lounge superstar Joe McGinty, and professional thereminista Dorit Chrysler. That version will go on the new album, I don’t know yet if there will also be a version of the Portal 2 song.

Are you going to play this song live at shows?

Eventually. For now I think it’s a little too close to when the game was released. It’s debatable whether or not the song contains actual spoilers, but it is certainly true that hearing it outside the context of the game will be a different experience. So I want to make sure I’ve given people plenty of time to buy and play the game before I start forcing it on them at shows. I don’t know exactly when that will be, sort of going to play it by ear.

Did you play the game before you wrote the song?

No, they created the game based on a song I made up based on nothing.