J Balvin will release new songs soon, as will The Pokémon Company.
At the end of the Pokémon Day 25th anniversary virtual show on Saturday (February 27), headed by Post Malone, a somewhat ambiguous ending card appeared on the screen with the names of Balvin and Katy Perry. Rolling Stone I heard that Balvin and Perry – who was announced as the face of Pokémon’s P25 commemorative campaign in January – are creating original songs as part of a 14-track album called Pokémon 25: the album. It will include songs from 11 different artists from Universal Music Group (UMG) and will be released by Capitol Records in the fall.
On the phone with Rolling Stone from Miami, Balvin said his music is not over yet, but it is close. The reggaeton superstar added that he can’t stop combing the sounds of Pokémon games and TV episodes, trying to create a sensational single that will please fans of both him and Pikachu. “We are going to come to a Crazy song. It will get everyone’s attention ”, says Balvin Rolling Stone. “It’s easy to make a Pokémon song if you just want that fan base, but we don’t have a closed mind. We want everyone to vibe with Pokémon. “
Fans already assumed that Perry had a song up his sleeve when a promotional clip included his voice singing the word “electric”, but it was not official until now.
The news of the album comes two days after Post Malone released a cover of Hootie and the Blowfish, “Only Wanna Be With You”, one of the 14 songs on the compilation. “I’ve always been a fan of the band and Darius, [this song is] one of my favorites, and it was super fun to cover, ”said Post Malone Rolling Stone in a statement. “The song was released 25 years ago, which also happened when Pokémon started.”
Rolling Stone was unable to contact Katy Perry in time for this story, but Anton Monsted – executive vice president of soundtracks and A&R for the Capitol Music Group, who is leading the project – says he heard a demo of the song while she was still was in development, and emphasizes that he immediately wanted to repeat: “This is the sign that you are sitting on something incredible. And it’s a very ‘Katy Perry’ song. ”He says that fans don’t need to understand the Pokémon connection to have fun. “Katy Perry radiates the joy and fun that are synonymous with the Pokémon brand,” said JC Smith, Senior Director of Consumer Marketing at The Pokémon Company.
Perry, Balvin and another superstar, whose identity is still under wraps, have P25 music videos on the way, as well as “exclusive merchandise collection (s) celebrating each artist and Pokémon on their 25th anniversary”. There is not much additional information about the other songs, but UMG representatives confirmed that Post Malone made the only cover. The rest of the album will be filled with originals from “some of the hottest new artists from around the world”.
When specifically asked whether artists from Asian territories were involved, especially considering that The Pokémon Company is a Japanese company, representatives were not available for comment.
Balvin describes Pokémon as a religion for many. “In a beautiful way … They love it, they know what they want and they know all the details of the game,” he says.
“It’s easy to make a Pokémon song if you just want that fan base, but we don’t have a closed mind. We want everyone to vibe with Pokémon. ”- J Balvin
He expects his music, which is being produced by close collaborators Tainy and Sky, to be completed in the next few weeks. Balvin explains that he is being very careful with the process. He wants to honor the central fan base, while making the music understandable to the masses – and, of course, cool. He wants people to hear the music out of context and be surprised when they discover the connection.
Balvin says his involvement is not “just commercial”. Born in 1985, he was 10 or 11 years old when the franchise was launched. He fondly remembers playing Pokémon on his gray Gameboy and learning more about the characters’ personality through the TV show. “I would never do anything that doesn’t translate into my identity,” he says.
Balvin was originally approached to create the song last year, but he said that “the vibe was so wrong” during Covid-19’s intense blockades and the social and political protests that rocked the world in 2020. (He even contracted the virus, and it took him about three months to get back to normal.) “We were like, ‘Let’s start from scratch in 2021 and get it right,'” he recalls.
The lyrics of the song are entirely in Spanish, and Balvin is enthusiastic about it: “The globalization of our music in Spanish is getting bigger and bigger”. He says he expects the Spanish song to end up being the biggest on the album, and the idea of what it would mean for the Latin community motivates him.
With this song and other projects he is currently working on, Balvin says he is “looking for different ways to elevate not only me, but also our culture and lifestyle”, adding that he loves to stretch different creative muscles. (Another Nike Jordan is not out of the question, for example.) “I am trying to find ways to connect with the world, knowing the situation the whole world is going through. We have to connect with people, ”he says.
“Exploring, meeting a diverse group of people and Pokémon, overcoming obstacles and working together to achieve something great are the main elements of Pokémon,” says Smith of The Pokémon Company. “In the beginning, our creative discussions focused on finding artists who were fun and conveyed the feeling you get when you flee into the Pokémon world.”
Capitol’s Monsted points out that the project is exclusively a soundtrack and not a soundtrack. “What we’re doing is a little bit unusual … it’s not related to a unique film experience. We are reflecting the values, ethics and feeling of the Pokémon world through these songs. And I think that each one will build on top of the other to tell a story. “
He says capitol worked with The Pokémon Company on developing “a creative briefing” for artists for several months. “We wanted to give them as much creative freedom as possible to create something that was exclusively their interpretation … And at the same time, you need to establish some kind of parameter. I know this as a creative person. If someone says, ‘Go and write me a story. Here is an infinite amount of time and blank pages. Just go and do something good, ‘I will never do that. ”With the briefing, he used an approach similar to the one he uses to order music for films. Ultimately, the album will reflect “different genres and different points of view”, while focusing on universal concepts like “the positive incorporation of competition, growth and training producing results”.
Monsted adds that having a history with Pokémon was an important factor. He says that Capitol has been blessed with enough time, which is difficult to achieve in his business, allowing his team to do research and analyze the artists under consideration for this project. “If we were not finding the organic and real relationship between the artists and Pokémon, I fear that we would end up with a compilation that is not related to the world,” he says, pointing out that the public is able to smell inauthenticity. “We have to show this respect to the public or they will not believe us next time.”
When the time came for the creative process, the final artists were geographically scattered and united by technology. “We have digital recording very much on our side,” says Monsted, who confirms that the artists had to rely on Zoom and FaceTime to make this project cross the finish line.
Sending music and launching is just one of several finish lines as well. The P25 is a “permanent, one-year activation”, according to Monsted, with different types of experiences and surprises in store.
When asked if The Pokémon Company has plans to use the album’s music for future Pokémon projects, such as TV shows, movies, advertisements, events or games, Smith explained that the songs were intended to be a “capsule celebration” during the 25th anniversary: “Although other uses are not planned at this point, Pokémon is full of surprises, so I can’t say that we won’t think about anything.”