Afterwards, it was covered again by Ben Dixon and The Sad Truth for the English broadcast of Pokémon: XY. "Pokémon Theme" was first covered by Billy Crawford for Pokémon: The First Movie. The theme song has been covered by various groups and people. On February 26, 2019, the song was used again in the film, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, as well as the film's second trailer. On November 16, 2018, an official trailer for Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! featured the original theme song. In December 2016, the song reached spot 232 on the Dutch Top 2000, a difference of over 1400 spots compared to its ranking in the previous year. Paige also performed another parody of the song, featuring Dwayne Johnson as a Pokémon as well as YouTube stars MatPat and Ali-A. Although Paige recorded the song in four hours, he received a large one-time payment for the song in 2000.
In an interview with the New York Post, Paige claimed that he did not originally expect the song to become popular when he first recorded it, stating that he "didn’t really know much about Pokémon" when he did the demo, other than a scene in the animated series that caused bouts of epileptic seizures in Japan. In response to the success of the mobile app Pokémon Go, Paige re-recorded the theme.
Despite the resurgence, Paige did not receive any royalties from the song. The same month, after rising up to 1,079% in sales, the song hit number four on Billboard's "Kids Digital Songs" chart after initially peaking at 10 in 2010, as well as peaking at number three on the " Hot Dance Singles Sales" chart. Afterwards, Dutch electronic music artist Hardwell played the theme at the 2016 edition of Ultra Europe as one of his final tunes. There were instances of police cars playing the song through loudspeakers while driving near Pokémon Go players, as well as groups of people singing the song in public. In July 2016, after the release of the mobile game Pokémon Go, the song had a 382% increase in listeners on music streaming platform Spotify. In 2015, the song was voted to be part of the annual Dutch Top 2000 radio marathon, after a call-for-action on Facebook went viral within the country. During the 2012 primary election, Paige himself performed a parody of the song in support of the Republican candidate Ron Paul. Afterwards, Smosh's video was removed on YouTube due to a copyright notice. It became the most viewed video on the site before being surpassed by " The Evolution of Dance". In November 2005, the Internet comedy duo Smosh recorded a video for the song on YouTube.
Although he was reluctant at first, he saw the show's potential when he took his son to premiere of the debut episode in Columbus Circle. Meanwhile, when first approached about the theme song, Siegler initially saw the show's concept as "incomprehensible" before realizing that the series was about friendship. It is derived from the Japanese tagline "(ポケモンGETだぜ!, Pokémon getto da ze!)" Furthermore, "Gotta Catch 'em all!" came from a series of contenders, which included "Catch 'em if you can" (which made it in an earlier version of the theme song). Īccording to Norman Grossfeld, the then-president of 4Kids Productions, the line "Gotta catch 'em all!" was created as a "tagline for marketing purposes that would also be included in the theme song". Although the theme song premiered on the debut episode " Pokémon, I Choose You!" on September 8, 1998, Jason Paige was called back again in 1999 to produce an extended version of the theme song for the album Pokémon 2.B.A. David Rolfe, the vocalist for later themes of the series, played the guitar while Jason Paige provided the vocals. Siegler and Loeffler wrote the lyrics to the song while Siegler (previously a bassist for bands including Todd Rundgren's Utopia and Hall & Oates) produced the track, also playing keyboards, bass, and drums.