“You have been replaced, I don’t need anyone now, When I delete you maybe I’ll stop feeling so bad.”
I can’t remember the last time I got so many requests to arrange a piece, and it’s quite fitting because both Portal games and accompanying songs are absolutely fantastic.
Portal 2′s ‘Want You Gone’ is the sophomore follow up to the successful ‘Still Alive’ song credit from Portal 1, and it’s also my 4th Jonathan Coulton arrangement.
When preparing for this piece, I wanted to understand the characters and process that it took to write it. When I came across Steamcast’s interview with Jonathan Coulton by Saurabh, I began to learn more about where Valve’s Portal 1 ends, and where Portal 2 begins.
I had the flutes play softly over the clarinets in order to capture the pain that GLaDOS was feeling in the first verse. The softness is backed by the powerful drum beat, which keeps the piece moving until the violins enter. The one thing I really identified from this piece is how GLaDOS began to cut everything out of her life. She wants everyone gone, she doesn’t like humanity, and she cracks jokes and taunts in a sort of passive-aggressive fashion. We all have passive aggressive thoughts, and we all redigest past regrets, and so the lyrics “when I delete you maybe I’ll stop feeling so bad” are really, to me, about how sometimes we have to feel worse in order to feel better.
Sometimes there are people in our lives who leach onto us and pull us down, and as much as we try to carry on like that, it’s not sustainable because it’s unhealthy. Tho it pains us to detach them, sometimes it’s the only way to succeed, be happy, and continue to move forward.
‘Still Alive’ showed me how nothing is ever really gone, and ‘Want You Gone’ showed me how feelings will always still continue to be alive. And that’s a powerful stance of both pieces mirror each other’s perspectives, because I’m realizing that as we can try to write things off in our life, they never go away, and sometimes you finally learn how much they mean to you when they’re no longer there.
Hope you enjoyed this piece, I sure did. I’m excited for Jonathan Coulton’s new album next month, and perhaps even see a Portal 3 game by Valve with more fantastic pieces.
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