In my long history of working with Pokémon music, one of the most frustrating obstacles I’ve run into is not a lack of source material, but a lack of commercial availability. For every song that is available on CD or as a digital download, it seems like there is another not available for purchase. Between movies 4-6 and 8-12 (you may recall that “This Side of Paradise” from movie 7 actually is available on the 4Kids music collection, and is therefore ineligible for this list), as well as the TV show and games such as Pokémon Channel, there is enough music for roughly two to three albums.

Now, I’m not naïve-knowing what I do about the music industry, there are very likely financial, legal, and possibly even technical hurdles to releasing some of these songs, so I’m not trying to blame or vilify The Pokémon Company International (or anyone else in particular). Instead, I’m making a list (a wish list, perhaps) of the ten songs I’d like to see up for consideration the next time a US Pokémon album is being made. To be fair, this was a really hard list to make, and I had to pull from the list of songs I was familiar with and could review easily, so some songs you might have expected (like that one from “Do I Hear a Ralts?” everyone keeps talking about) might be missing from this list: more…