Children’s Choir Sings “Still Alive”

Here’s the coolest thing you’re going to see all day: An elementary school choir singing “Still Alive,” the hugely popular closing song from Valve’s hit puzzle game Portal.

“Hugely popular” is relative, of course, but few songs are better known to gamers than Jonathan Coulton’s “Still Alive,” the funny, poignant track that accompanied the Portal closing credits. And while the original rendition is just about flawless, Gifford Children’s Choir Director Jack Senzig came up with what might be an even cooler way to present it: Having it sung by dozens of young children.

“This is going to be so cool. I can’t stop giggling,” Senzig wrote on his blog. “The piece lends itself amazingly well to our choir. It is fresh and interesting and will captivate the young people at the Case Area Choir festival and around the world for that matter.”

Naturally, the kids in the choir are all too young to have played Portal themselves (presumably, anyway), which apparently led to concerns from a few parents about the content of the song. But Senzig noted that the song will attract attention to the choir, possibly leading to requests for other collaborations, and that the game itself is really no worse than “enslaving Pokemon monsters to battle for you.”

“We live in a modern world and ‘Still Alive’ has a modern text,” Senzig wrote in a separate post. “The kids will be singing ‘Sir Eglamore’ as part of Caiman Chorus. A line in that song says, ‘Out came a dragon from her den, Fa la lanky down dilly, that killed God knows how many men.’ The computer in the Portal game is just a modern day dragon.”

“The text will not cause any damage to our children and the pride they will feel for the accolades they will receive will be entirely edifying,” he continued. “Do you think our children were dealt an injury when we sang, ‘When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby bow cradle and all?’ This will bring only good to them. Trust me.”

While some of the parents may have been baffled by lines about running out of cake and making neat guns for the people who are still alive, the response was powerful and enthusiastic, as Senzig predicted. And for good reason: The video quality is rather poor (although Senzig says he hopes to shoot and post a better one soon) but it’s a great performance and a lot of fun to see and hear.

via: Reddit