Gotta Catch 'Em All

About

"Gotta Catch 'Em All" is the colloquial name of the theme song for the Pokémon anime series. The song became an iconic theme song in pop culture, and was widely parodied online.

Origin

The Pokémon theme was written by John Siegler and John Loeffler and performed by Jason Paige and debuted as the theme song for Pokémon anime when it debuted on September 8th, 1998 (shown below, left).^[1] Paige rerecorded an extended version of the song for the 1999 album, Pokémon: 2.B.A. Master (shown below, right).

Spread

The song remains popular to this day, over 20 years since the debut of the Pokémon anime, thanks in part to widespread parodies. A Smosh lip-sync of the theme uploaded in 2005 was the most popular video on YouTube until it was surpassed by Evolution of Dance] It was removed from YouTube for copyright reasons (reupload shown below, top left). The song has also been covered by Postmodern Jukebox (shown below, top right), Xander Mobius (shown below, bottom left), and Tay Zonday (shown below, bottom right).

Paige has continued to perform the song. He sang the song in support of Ron Paul during the 2012 Republican Primary (shown below, left) and at Anime Expo with Super Soul Bros in 2017 (shown below, right).

The song saw a significant spike in plays with the release of Pokémon Go, seeing a 362% increase in Spotify plays after the release.^[1] It hit number 4 on Billboard's Kids charts that year.^[3]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References