What are the lyrics to the song PotatOS Lament on Volume 2 of the Portal 2 Soundtrack?

Question

What are the lyrics to the song "PotatOS Lament" on Volume 2 of the Portal 2 soundtrack? It doesn't sound like English (though some parts do sound like the word "potatoes"). Is it another language? Or just gibberish?

Asked by Mark Szymanski

Answer

All signs point to the actual lyrics being a mixture of gibberish and bad Italian/Latin. In reponse to a question about the Turret Song on Reddit, Ellen McLain answered as follows:

The composer, Mike Morasky was the driving force behind the Turret Opera. He wrote all the music. He requested that I use my legit voice (operatic sound) on some of the takes. He chose the takes to use. He asked me to make up some words. So I did so in my bad Italian.

This most likely carried over to the PotatOS Lament song, as further strengthened by a thread on the Steam forums, pointing to an appearance of Ellen McLain at Anime Midwest 2011 of which a Youtube video is included in the post. During the panel the PotatOS Lament song is specifically mentioned, however Ellen names it "GLaDOS Lament", of which the following is said:

She then goes on to say she made up words to it using her "bad High School Latin" (lol) which means the song is both Latin AND gibberish.

So there we have it! Bad Latin/Italian and gibberish.

Answered by Niels Walta

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