Featured image courtesy of Jason Paige’s official Facebook page
There have been dozens of Pokémon theme songs over the years. Every new region, every new generation of trainers, every fresh era of the anime arrives with a brand-new opening. Yet somehow, one theme continues to tower above all the others.
The original theme from the first season of Pokémon — the Indigo League — is still the one everyone remembers.
Say the words “I wanna be the very best…” and most people instantly know what comes next. Even those who stopped watching the show decades ago can usually sing the chorus word for word.
What makes that even more remarkable is that the song isn’t just a nostalgic relic for millennials. Somehow it has continued travelling through generations of fans. My own eight-year-old twins know every lyric.
So why did this particular opening song become such a cultural phenomenon when so many others have come and gone?
A theme song that feels like an anthem
Part of the answer lies in how the song was written. Most television themes introduce a show. The Pokémon theme does something slightly different.
It introduces a mission.
The opening line immediately sets the tone: “I wanna be the very best.” Within seconds the listener understands the entire premise of the series — ambition, adventure, and the dream of becoming a Pokémon Master.
Rather than simply describing the world of the show, the lyrics invite the audience to step into it. Kids didn’t just watch Pokémon. They imagined themselves on that journey. They’re inspired to be their very best and to harness the power that is inside of them, as well as their pocket monsters.
That structure is a big reason the song still feels powerful today. The chorus, built around the famous slogan “Gotta catch ’em all,” works almost like a chant. It’s simple, energetic, and instantly memorable.
“Music has the power to move through the air and touch everything in its path… Songs from our past can trigger our nostalgic feelings and bring us back through time to our childhood and align us with the present moment.”
Jason Paige
And that energy translates directly into real life.
At conventions and gaming events around the world, crowds still sing the theme together as if it were a stadium anthem. The moment the opening guitar riff begins, fans instinctively join in.
It’s a rare thing for a cartoon theme song to achieve.
The internet gave the song a second life
Another reason the Indigo League theme never disappeared is that it successfully made the leap from television to internet culture. Various uploads of the original opening sequence on YouTube collectively reach hundreds of millions of views. One upload alone by user Arcanine299 has now been watched over 76 million times.
In the early days of YouTube, the comedy duo Smosh released a lip-sync video performing the Pokémon theme in a bedroom. The video, which has now been removed due to copyright claims, quickly went viral and became one of the platform’s earliest breakout hits. Looking back now there are some…questionable moments in the video but I still remember how much I laughed when I first discovered it with my sister. Re-uploads can be found showing almost 4 million views.
For many people who had grown up with the show, that video was the first time they had heard the song again since childhood. For many it was also the first time hearing the full track, rather than just the edit that was used for the show itself. Smosh and Youtube helped reintroduce the theme to a generation of new internet users and cemented it as a piece of early YouTube history.
From that point on, the song never truly left the online world, with multiple edits, covers and parodies emerging.
The numbers show it never went away
Even today, the theme continues to attract millions of listeners.
Jason Paige’s modern studio recording of the Pokémon theme continues to draw millions of listeners on Spotify, while videos across his official YouTube channel have collectively accumulated more than 74 million views. Part of that enduring interest may stem from the mystery that surrounded the voice behind the song for many years. For a long time, fans knew the anthem but not the singer, and when Paige eventually stepped forward and embraced the legacy of the track, it became a moment of rediscovery for both longtime Pokémon fans and newer audiences encountering the voice behind the iconic theme for the first time.
Those numbers are remarkable for a television theme from the late 1990s. Other themes from the same era, while still having large fanbases, have never quite reached the same level.
The song even experienced a huge resurgence during the global launch of Pokémon Go in 2016, when streaming numbers jumped dramatically as nostalgia for the franchise exploded once again. During the launch of the app, streams of the song increased by roughly 382% on Spotify in just one weekend.
More than two decades after its release, people are still actively searching for and listening to the song. I know I do!
A song that crossed generation
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Indigo League theme is that it continues to resonate with people who weren’t even alive when it first aired. Children discovering Pokémon today through games, streaming platforms, or YouTube clips are still learning the same song that introduced the series to audiences in the 1990s. Very few television themes manage that kind of longevity.
The Pokémon theme didn’t just open a cartoon.
It became a shared cultural memory. Even years later during Ash’s final on-screen battle, fans across the globe shed a tear as the original theme was played in the background.
And more than twenty-five years after we first heard it, the moment those opening notes began, millions of people around the world still know exactly what comes next.
“I wanna be the very best…”
Speaking with the voice behind the song
To explore the legacy of the Pokémon theme, I reached out to Jason Paige, the singer behind the original English speaking opening theme. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions about recording the song and watching its cultural impact unfold over the years.
The Pokemon theme has become something entire crowds still sing together at conventions and events. What is it like hearing fans sing the song back to you?
Jason Paige: Most of my performances don’t involve a band or background singers, so it’s a really good thing that everyone is singing along. Lol. It amazes me how diverse the audience that knows the song is. I have been to many continents and had crowds of all types sing along.
One of the highlights was a preschool of 3 to 5-year-olds in the Netherlands, not even knowing how to speak English they all sang along to the English version of the Pokémon theme song. It was absolutely precious.
The song has been recorded in just about every language in existence, and all of it is based on the English version. When I’m in other countries, I try to sing the tagline in their language — “Attrapez-les tous!” in French, “Schnapp sie Dir!” in German and “¡Atrápalos ya!” in Spanish. I also recorded a Japanese version of the English theme song even though Japan has a theme song that predates my version. Check my youtube for that gem (you can watch it here).
The opening line “I wanna be the very best” is instantly recognisable to millions of people. Do you have a favourite line or lyric from the song?
Jason Paige: I love the first line of the song. It inspires everybody with a message that is absolutely universal. But my favourite line is “the power that’s inside”, this is such a great inspiring phrase that can apply to so many things.
One of those most importantly is our imagination. The human superpower that is inside all of us is that we all create everything out of nothingness. Everything that isn’t nature. Our unique ideas that we create, they go out into the world and we all touch the rest of humanity with our individual talents. But first, we have to imagine these things into existence. It’s the most spiritual line of the song.
Pokemon, in its simplest form inspires us to use our imagination to experience the world around this simple character, drawn on a small cardboard card.
You have performed the song all over the world over the years. Do you have a favourite fan moment that has really stayed with you?
Jason Paige: In addition to my musical performances, I do a lot of Q&A Talkback sessions where I get to hear fans explain the deeper meaning and experience of the song from their unique individual perspectives. Many have confessed that the song has helped them get through hard times, conflict, depression and illness in addition to underscoring their wedding, graduation, birthdays and triumphant moments.
One girl told a story of a horrible accident she was in that left her in a coma for months. She said that she heard the Pokemon theme song as she was coming out of the coma. They played the song and it crossed into her consciousness and woke her up!
Music has the power to move through the air and touch everything in its path. It has vibration and frequency that isn’t only stored in our memory field but in the water molecules that we are made of. Songs from our past can trigger our nostalgic feelings and bring us back through time to our childhood and align us with the present moment.
The song is now more than 25 years old but continues to find new audiences online and through younger fans. What has been like watching new generations discover it?
Jason Paige: When I finally popped out of the poke ball I was trapped in for eighteen years in 2016, revealing that I was the voice of the theme, one of the most common comments on my Youtube videos was “you’re the voice of my generation”. Literally hundreds of people were leaving that comment. In 2021 I adopted the phrase and made a “Voice of a Generation” gold trainer card.
This generation has now exposed their children to the original theme song and the Pokemon ecosystem as they experienced it and it has indeed created another generation of Jason Paige fans. Only this time they can put a name and face to the voice as children and don’t have to wait until they’re eighteen to find out who it was.
There’s something really beautiful about the way the first generation experienced the song without me attached. They experienced the art for its own sake. Like seeing a great work of art. When you see a Picasso, you don’t imagine Picasso painting it, you just experience the painting.
I feel like I have to ask — do you have a favourite Pokemon?
Jason Paige: I don’t have favourites. I have experiences. As children we are constantly asked to pick our favourite colour, our favourite song, our favourite movie, our favourite class, our favourite Pokemon. Once we declare these favourites, we limit ourselves to the myriad of experiences we could have with all the other Pokemon.
To be a well rounded trainer you have to ‘catch em all’.
