Behind The Wall
Jason Paige: The Original Voice of Pokémon - Behind the Wall (Ep. 15)
Sun, 02 Mar 2025
In this episode of Behind The Wall, I sat down with Jason Paige, the legendary singer behind the original Pokémon theme song—one of the most recognizable and beloved theme songs in history. But what most people don’t know is that Jason’s story isn’t just about talent—it’s about being in the right place at the right time and seizing the moment that would change everything. Jason has worked with Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, and sung some of the most famous jingles ever, but before that, he was hustling to get his voice heard—literally. He made fake jingle tapes and delivered them to ad agencies, hoping to land work as a singer. He had no idea that years later, he’d be handed a last-minute studio gig to sing the theme for a brand-new cartoon called “Pokémon”. And that gig? It made history. That one recording session became the soundtrack of a generation. What started as another job became a song that billions of people around the world can sing from memory.In this conversation, we dive into: 🎤 The full, never-before-heard story of how the Pokémon theme song was made 🎤 How Jason randomly got the call to sing it—and how it was almost very different 🎤 The moment he realized the song had become a global phenomenon 🎤 His experience working with Michael Jackson & Aerosmith 🎤 How his voice has secretly shaped pop culture for decades Jason Paige is living proof that sometimes, the biggest moments in life come when you least expect them. He didn’t set out to be the singing voice of Pokémon—but through a mix of talent, hustle, and being ready for the right opportunity, he became exactly that. His story is a testament to the power of saying "yes," taking chances, and giving your all to every moment, no matter how small it seems at the time. Because sometimes, the things we do in a single day—one recording session, one audition, one leap of faith—can leave an impact that lasts a lifetime.Where You Can Find More of Jason Paige🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4C2BnfCRMI8bTf3LlBUljz?si=dMsR6fNGRaqvnWsfHtQ4KA 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonpaige/?hl=en📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JasonPaige📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jasonpaigeWhere You Can Find More of Daniel🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5VjSRHdISZZnT9WkZC4xBb?si=d33eed531ea84d85📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielwall/?hl=en📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DanielsWall📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@danielswall?lang=en
Chapter 1: How did Jason Paige become the voice of the Pokémon theme song?
How did you end up singing the Pokemon theme song? All kinds of different places contacted me and said, what's the story? One of the most famous songs ever. This song is going crazy right now.
And the original tag was... Catch him if you can!
It became the number one most viewed video on YouTube. Wow. I created a Pokemon Go theme song.
You created a fake jingle tape and you knocked on doors and that led to this? That's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard.
The Pokemon ecosystem of people are probably in the trillions.
That's right there.
is the man, the myth, the legend, the man who's been heard by almost everyone who has ever heard or ever watched a show, probably everyone in the world, at least in the United States, in Japan, across the world, Jason Page. The voice of a generation. I'm so excited to be here talking to you because your voice has just been such a huge part of our childhood, our adulthood, and our life.
First of all, thank you so much for being a part of it. Thank you, sir, for being here. For anyone out there who may not know who you are, what are some of the projects and songs that people would know you from? Most notable.
When you get nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea, Pepto-Max. Subway, eat fresh. I see a little silhouette of a can. Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew, time to do the slam dunk.
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Chapter 2: What was Jason's journey before Pokémon?
Well, this band that I had was called the What's Up the Band, and we got dropped from our label, as most bands do, You know, back in the day.
A lot of people. Yeah, yeah.
It's a very common story. We retained the Masters after we were dropped and we started playing in New York City to try to build our following. And our following was building. The band kind of had some internal problems, broke up and became a TV show. And that TV show on public access, Manhattan Public Access, was a huge, huge hit.
Back in the day, there was 18 cable TV channels and we were number 19. It was like YouTube before YouTube, right? YouTube before YouTube. Wow. Pretty much. Pretty much. All of the crazy, jackass, skits, weird, real-world stuff that was happening on our TV show is what the whole YouTube world manifested into. So Russ and I were in this What's Up TV show. We said, let's start a jingle house.
Let's write jingles. We made a fake jingle reel of just products that we just made up. They weren't even 30 seconds. They were just like, you know…
Evian.
When you want the purest water you can think of, try Evian. And we had music underneath. We did a little... Oh, wow. We made our own fake jingles, various lengths, put them on a cassette tape, and started circulating it to jingle houses.
Did you just drop them off in a CD form?
No, in a cassette tape form. Pre-CDs at this point. Dropping off cassette tapes at Jingle Houses with this seven song reel with fake commercials that we made up to show a variety of skills and styles that we could play. Russ is a virtuoso, keyboard can play any style, had a home studio and we would be doing all kinds of styles
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Chapter 3: What was the recording process for the Pokémon theme song?
For sure.
So we see the TV show and we go in the studio and we cut this thing. This 30-second jingle takes a couple of hours.
And the original tag was… Was it called a jingle at that time or was it called a theme song?
It was a theme. You know, we call it a theme. But, you know, we're in the jingle world. We either call them music houses or jingle houses. But, you know, we want an earworm that everybody's going to remember. And the tag is even more important than the whole song often because it gets used over and over again.
Just like Legomania.
That's it.
Legomania. Subway eat fresh.
Bam, that's it. That's really what we want.
So they have that song and Catch Him If You Can. But they come back to you later to change it?
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Chapter 4: How did the Pokémon theme song become a global phenomenon?
And that's not really part of the deal to stop and say, hey, before we do this interview, we gotta sign this contract. I'm getting publishing for all the things that I've just created right here. For me, there is no reality. You cannot own music. Music is everywhere. Music is everywhere. Music is everywhere. Music is everywhere.
Music is everywhere. Music is everywhere.
Every runner knows this moment when it just clicks. When your legs just go along, the pain stops, the doubts are gone and you only feel the runner's high. That's the reason why you get up so early. Why you don't notice a little rain. Why running becomes a ritual. So run and feel the runner's high. Go wild and learn more about running at puma.de.
It's in our speech, it's in our tone, it's in our rhythms, so... Though there is this thing called music publishing, it's really just borrowing from what already exists in nature. For sure. But yeah, in the real world, that would be a discussion that would have to be had before I did any improvs and before I did anything other than exactly what they told me to do.
This song, Pokemon theme song, Gotta Catch Em All, one of the most famous songs ever. And I was doing some research on this because this is actually really cool. there are over 1,233 episodes of Pokemon. There have been over 24 different Pokemon theme songs.
And this Pokemon theme song, I looked this up, now don't officially quote me on this, but online it said, was only used in 79 episodes of the anime. Which is insane for that many episodes, this theme song to just live in the hearts of so many people. What does that mean to you as a singer after all these years? That's the earworm.
That's the thing that hooked them in the beginning and that stayed with everybody throughout their entire lives. I think, you know, when you mix it up too much, you lose people and they really want to identify with this one song. And it was the right song. lyric and the right song to sell the show, which it obviously did.
And then the show was sold after that, but the song remains in your head afterwards. And the song was also a big hit song in that sort of time period. It ended up on Billboard. It ended up on Billboard. It got its radio life and that cemented it in people's minds. So after that, you just, you know, it's like your first girlfriend. You just always remember her. Definitely.
Is it true that you have a Pokemon theme song ringtone?
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Chapter 5: What other notable projects has Jason worked on?
I think in this world, there's only a couple of songs that have this kind of an impact on humanity. And Bohemian Rhapsody is one of them.
I was going to say, I don't know if you could compare this to anything else, but Bohemian Rhapsody is probably one of the closest.
What else can you compare it to? Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't have toys and games and cards and TV shows and all of that stuff. But it certainly has this appeal that has lasted a very long time globally. But not as pervasive as the Pokemon theme song. I don't know if you're getting the Bohemian Rhapsody in kindergartens in the Netherlands or, you know, in India in small little areas, remote India.
But you got Pokemon in those areas because they're contacting me to go to them. So you sing this song in 1997, 1998.
It comes out in 1998. When's the next time do you revisit the song? I revisit it in 2012. Actually, I revisited it right before then. Because there was a viral video with Smosh.
Oh, yeah. Yes. I mean, it was revisited by Smosh, and we saw that it generated YouTube's highest video count with Smosh making basically the music video for the theme song that never existed that I should have made. Instead, these two kids in their bedrooms made it, and it became the number one most viewed video on YouTube, almost up until the point where YouTube sold to Google for $5 billion.
Wow. I think it kind of broke their algorithm. YouTube just couldn't handle what was going on because it was such a great idea. Not Pokemon theme song by Smosh, but YouTube in and of itself. However, that was very much in part because of that stupid dancing guy video and the Smosh video that blew YouTube up. But yeah, that was definitely a moment of revisiting. I revisited it in 2008.
In the year 2000 when, I think that was when, 99, when it became a radio hit on Radio Disney and it was playing every time, every like 15 minutes they would be playing it again on Radio Disney. It was incredible.
Is that the first time you heard yourself on the radio?
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Chapter 6: How does Jason feel about his legacy with the Pokémon theme song?
They weren't grown. They didn't have disposable income and they weren't customers to media organizations and buyers of the products that are advertised. So Billboard, TMZ, CNN, Entertainment Weekly, all kinds of different places contacted me and said, what's the story? this song is going crazy right now. And I told them the story, pretty much what I'm telling you today.
So everything from 2016 on was not with Pokemon itself, but with Pokemon as like a community.
18 years of being trapped in a Pokeball. And I finally popped out in 2016 and started realizing this incredible ecosystem of creative people thriving in Comic-Cons and thriving in cosplay and thriving online with their own Pokemon channels and Pokemon music channels. And I wanted to create content for them because I thought, wow, this is amazing. This is an amazing opportunity.
I created a Pokemon Go theme song. Those were some of the first people that were contacting me, people at Pokemon Go events that were producing.
Pokemon Go was massive.
Huge, massive. And they didn't know quite what to do, but they wanted me to be involved singing the song. So I was like, all right, well, I'll sing the theme song at your Pokemon Go event and I'll create another Pokemon Go song because there wasn't a good Pokemon Go song. There was that kid, I play Pokemon Go. Horrible, horrible thing.
Which, of course, is way more viral than my Pokemon Go song, which is excellent. You guys can check that out. It's an amazing...
sister to the theme song that uh that it's doing all right now but uh once again one billion people have downloaded the pokemon go app and only 300 000 have watched the youtube video of the pokemon go theme song so we got to get that one blown up on the on the you know spotify and all of those platforms as well
How does it feel that this community is kind of giving you this platform to be able to, you know, push the boundary of what's possible?
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Chapter 7: What improvisations did Jason make during the recording sessions?
Chapter 8: What impact did the Pokémon theme song have on pop culture?
I have profound gratitude for the energy and effort that you have put into your Pokemon reality, and I'm just trying to catch up. I spent four hours almost 25 years ago, and you spent 4,000 hours. And I didn't know that I could invest in this ecosystem until 2016. It was a job that was a good job, a fun job that created something that was great, but I didn't understand it
until I invested in your imagination and what you've experienced. And I have gratitude for your experience and your selfless joy, whatever you, I'm saying 4,000 hours, might it be more than that, that you spent on Pokemon as a child. And that experience of loving something as a child and then having, the ability to carry it into adulthood is very, very rare.
I can carry some of my Speed Racer enthusiasm, but there's not enough content for me to really be an adult and still be loving Speed Racer or even like Matchbox cars. Like, cause I was very into the Matchbox cars and all those crazy tracks that you could build, but there's not enough content to bring that into my adulthood and actually create adult content about Matchbox cars.
but the Pokemon generation is Pokemon. Pokemon puts out this thing, but then the generation of people that grew up on it and loved it really create the ecosystem. Pokemon may be a hundred billion dollar company, but the Pokemon ecosystem of people that are not associated with Pokemon in an official way are probably in the trillions of dollars.
because of the content they create and the peer to peer experience that they have with each other, the love they share, the trading. So I'm really just I'm really just swimming in that love. And that pool of love is vast and varied and really beautiful. And that's the goal of any artist, of art, is to impact the world in a loving, positive, powerful way.
And that intention is behind everything I do in the same way that I'm intending that for this interview and your followers and your viewers to feel that. From you. And that's your intention in your interview, to bring the best that you are to the world. So this is just, it's an amazing thing. And it doesn't happen from one person or one Jingle House or one writer.
It happens from a billion people all around. Investing their energy in something that they love to create value for each other. So, you know, I can't say enough. I mean, no amount of money is equal to this giant pool of love that's out there. And I can probably swim in it for the rest of my life and only see a very tiny percentage of it.
incredible and now 25 years later they are kind of putting an ending or a wrap-up towards ash and pikachu's story is there anything you're planning on doing for for that i'm just investing more in the pokemon ecosystem ash and pikachu might be over for a minute but uh pokemon certainly isn't and the theme song certainly isn't and i expect
that there are going to be more fan spinoffs of Ash and Pikachu moving on in ways that they should have a long time ago. And we're going to see a lot of great content coming out from people. And some of them may contact me to sing the theme song to the Ash when he gets his facial hair. And when he gets married, I'm singing the song at Ash's wedding.
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