Portal 2 Music Video Contest Winners: The National's 'Exile Villify' Gets A Sad Sock Puppet Video

A few months back, The National did a song exclusively for the Portal 2 video game. Sure, you wouldn't exactly expect that of The National, but that's what makes it awesome.

The track, "Exile Vilify," was familiar, much in the way every National song is, but new and exciting because -- it's a new National song!

It didn't stop there, though. Portal 2 then held a music-video contest for the song (with a guitar, and the glory, as a prize) and weeded through 320 fan-made videos. Weeks passed, and it finally came down to two. That's when the going got tough.

According to Valve Software, the game's developers:

After a few more weeks of fruitless debate, we realized there was a group who could help us crack this seemingly intractable stalemate: The United Nations. When that didn't pan out, we turned to another group: The guys who'd made the song, The National. They managed to pick a slim favorite, but weren't comfortable leaving the #2 video in the dust. So after a few more days of hard words and hurt feelings, we finally decided to award a first place winner followed by a mathematically imperceptibly close 1.00000000001th place winner. Both will receive the same great prize package, the only difference being that place #1 will include a guitar and place #1.00000000001 will feature an Aperture Science messenger bag signed by the Portal 2 Team.

Looking at the two -- it's easy to see why the first place winner won. How could you say no to a sad sock puppet?

WATCH the videos. Do you think the sad sock puppet deserved to win?

First Place Winner

1.00000000001th Place Winner

Oh yeah, and here's the second (third?) place winner, who was robbed of any glory:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/portal-2-national-music-video_n_922822.html

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