Released June 29, 1999 Length 3:15 | Recorded 1998–1999 Producer(s) John Loeffler | |
Writer(s) John Siegler, John Loeffler | ||
The "Pokémon Theme" (also known as "Gotta Catch 'Em All") is a song written by John Siegler and John Loeffler and performed by Jason Paige. It was the theme song for the first season of the English adaptation of the Pokémon anime. Since its release, the song has been virtually synonymous with the Pokémon franchise.
Contents
History
Siegler and Loeffler wrote the lyrics to the song while Siegler produced the track, playing keyboards, bass, and drums. David Rolfe, the vocalist for later themes of the series, played the guitar while Jason Paige provided the vocals. Although the theme song premiered on the debut episode "Pokémon, I Choose You!" on September 8, 1998, Jason Paige was called back again in 1999 to produce an extended version of the theme song for the album Pokémon 2.B.A. Master.
In November 2005, the Internet comedy duo Smosh recorded a video for the song on YouTube. It became the most viewed video on the site before being surpassed by "The Evolution of Dance". Afterwards, Smosh's video was removed on YouTube due to a copyright notice. During the 2012 primary election, Paige himself performed a parody of the song in support of the Republican candidate Ron Paul. In 2015, the song was voted to be part of the annual Dutch Top 2000 radio marathon, after a call-for-action on Facebook went viral within the country.
The theme song has been covered by various groups and people. "Pokémon Theme" was first covered by Billy Crawford for Pokémon: The First Movie. Afterwards, it was covered again by Ben Dixon and The Sad Truth for the English broadcast of Pokémon: XY. Others who have covered the theme song included Postmodern Jukebox, Kurt Hugo Schneider with Lindsey Stirling, Eric Calderone, Baracksdubs, Tay Zonday, Powerglove, Xander Mobus in character as the announcer from Super Smash Bros., Nathan Sykes, and Anthony Vincent.
Resurgence
In July 2016, after the release of the mobile game Pokémon Go, the song had a 630% increase in listeners on music streaming platform Spotify. There were instances of police cars playing the song through loudspeakers while driving near Pokémon Go players, as well as groups of people singing the song in public. Afterwards, Dutch electronic music artist Hardwell played the theme at the 2016 edition of Ultra Europe as one of his final tunes. The same month, after rising up to 1,079% in sales, the song hit number four on Billboard's "Kids Digital Songs" chart after initially peaking at 10 in 2010, as well as peaking at number three on the "Hot Dance Singles Sales" chart. Despite the resurgence, Paige did not receive any royalties from the song.
In response to the success of the Pokémon Go application, Paige re-recorded the theme. In an interview with the New York Post, Paige claimed that he did not originally expect the song to become popular when he first wrote it, stating that he "didn’t really know much about Pokémon" when he did the demo, other than a scene in the animated series that caused bouts of epileptic seizures in Japan. Although Paige recorded the song in four hours, he received a large one-time payment for the song in 2000. Paige also performed another parody of the song, featuring Dwayne Johnson as a Pokémon as well as YouTube stars MatPat and Ali A.
In December 2016 the song once again got listed in the Dutch Top 2000 and reached spot 232, a difference of 1434 spots compared to the ranking in 2015.