“Pokémon Legends: Z-A” has been out for a month now, marking the second entry in the franchise’s “Legends” series. The game brings us back to Lumiose City, a city based on real-life Paris, France, which was first introduced in “Pokémon XY.” It also comes nearly three decades after the original games. As such, it’s continuing to bring the excitement and wonder of the Pokémon series to a new generation.
For many of the original fans, it stirs up memories of coming home from school to watch the latest episode of the original TV series, and there’s no more iconic song in the Pokémon universe than that show’s theme song.
The “Pokémon Theme” was composed by John Siegler and John Loeffler to anchor the English adaptation of the Japanese anime. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Siegler admits they didn’t understand the show’s allure, calling it “just some weirdo cartoon” that was “just another gig.” The songwriting duo wanted to avoid a “nursery rhyme feel,” instead opting for an epic and inspirational anthem.
“My thing has always been that I’ve really loved pop hits. Like really hooky pop hits. That’s always been kind of my favorite thing. And that really served me super well in the jingle business because it was just my instinct to write a quick pop-sounding, hooky melody for whatever lyric we were assigned,” he said. “We didn’t have a formula of any kind. Our only formula was, we got to write something that’s really hooky that people were going to really latch on to right away.”
The song underwent some lyrical changes as the show’s iconic catchphrase “Gotta catch ’em all” was developed. (It was originally the lackluster saying, “Catch ’em if you can.”) After that, they hired vocalist Jason Paige to bring the words to life.
“When I walked into the studio, the track was mostly completed musically,” he explains in a talk with Forthright Records. “We watched a bit of the Japanese anime to catch a vibe, discussed what was needed musically, which vocal character I should use (a young rock kid sound), and then we banged it out in the usual amount of time, about an hour. At the end of the sessions as usual I provide many improvised alternate versions of the tagline, riffing out on the melody, intensity, rhythm, etc., so that the client can have multiple choices.”
The song begins with tension, rocking between a G minor chord and a D minor chord with a G in the bass. This creates a sense of discontent as Paige hits the iconic opening lyrics, “I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was.”
The song has been covered by a plethora of artists, including Postmodern Jukebox, Kurt Hugo Schneider, Powerglove, Poppy, Tay Zonday, Eric Calderone, and more. Today, we’re featuring the score for the “Pokémon Theme” as we watch Paige’s 2016 video revisiting the mega hit theme.
Watch the video above and follow along with the music for the “Pokémon Theme” song:
