Exile Vilify

I think it's unusual that this song would only be about Chell, since she's described as incredibly tenacious -- she never, ever gives up -- and the song seems to be about feeling powerless. It reminds me more of Doug Rattmann, another character from the game. My explanation is a little spoilery, though, so skip it if you want your Portal experience to be totally fresh:

[SPOILER!] If you read the promo comic "Lab Rat," (viewable @ thinkwithportals.com/comic/) you find out that Rattmann was a scientist employed by Aperture who survived GLaDOS's purge, and spent years wandering the facility alone, increasingly suffering from schizophrenia as his medication ran out. Eventually, he became the "rat man" whose writing you find on the walls of the passages behind the test chambers (you can thank him for the "cake is a lie" meme). He found Chell's file and believed she might be able to outwit GLaDOS, so he put her into the test rotation before Portal 1, and made sure her stasis chamber had enough power to keep her alive while the lab was falling apart at the beginning of Portal 2. [/SPOILER]

In the game, the only place you hear "Exile Vilify" playing is on a radio in one of his "rat nests," a tiny, dilapidated room hidden in one of the tests chambers, with some of the lyrics ("sucker's luck" and "don't even try") and illustrations of them painted on the walls. I feel like this story makes the song even more poignant... I get the feeling that Chell might not even know enough about her situation to grasp how hopeless it really is -- as a vessel for the player, she has no past and no memory; she doesn't really have a choice other than to just roll with the punches -- but Ratman has been watching her and suffering for the both of them. Goes to show that there's definitely more to Portal than just laughs.