The voice behind the famous Pokémon theme song explains the tune's enduring popularity

When voice artist Jason Paige recorded the theme song for the English version of the animated series Pokémon back in the late '90s, he wasn't even entirely sure what the show was all about. For him, it was just another job among the many other commercials and product jingles he helped produce.

"I knew very little about Pokémon at the time — there were some articles out about its popularity in Japan," Paige told q's Tom Power in a 2016 interview. "In the session, we were briefed and we watched on the monitor some of the Japanese TV show to kind of get a feel for what it was."

Back then, the franchise wasn't much more than a popular set of Nintendo games and an anime geared towards children.

"We decided that [the theme song] would be a 14-to-17-year-old sound," said Paige. "You've always got the little kids looking up to the bigger kids — so I sounded like a bigger kid."

More than 20 years later, the franchise is now a multimedia juggernaut that spans countless video games, television shows, ad campaigns and animated movies. And this week, its first big-budget Hollywood adaptation, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, will be released in theatres.

During the TV show's heyday in the late-90s and early-2000s, the track exploded in popularity.and could often be heard in commercials or even toy store aisles.

The song had another resurgence with fans in the summer of 2016, with the breakout success of the Pokémon Go app. The Pokémon theme song cracked the top spots on Billboard charts and increased in sales by more than 1,000 per cent. A version of the song also briefly appears in the second trailer for Detective Pikachu.

For Paige, the song's enduring popularity is about more than just the brand name associated with it. He believes that because it was sung by a little-known artist like himself at the time, it helped Pokémon fans associate it with the show's iconic hero, Ash.

"It's not an artist trying to represent themselves as an artist singing this song. It's just left up to the imagination," said Paige.

More importantly, he sees its memorability as a testament to how genuinely motivating the track can be, whether because of its lyrics or its inspirational sound.

"[The song] is an analogy for our lives and the people we bring into our lives and how we can help inspire them to be their best," he said. "Each Pokémon has a different power that you want to enable it to access … Each human being has a unique power you want to enable it to access as well."

Click 'listen' near the top of this page to hear the full segment.

— Produced by ​Miguel Santa Maria