MNN - Mother Nature Network

Executive Producer Nick Boxer reveals how the show's popular theme song came to be. (Meredith Darlington/MNN and Mike Lindsay/MNN)

Nick Boxer: You know, it’s like you tell someone you worked on Captain Planet, and they immediately start singing the theme song.

 

Music
Captain Planet, he’s our hero/Gonna take pollution down to zero/Down to zero!

 

Nick Boxer: And it’s just one of those weird things. And I’d be like, “Oh, I wrote the theme song.” And they’re like, “Oh, my!” Again, it’s like people just get so excited. It’s kind of funny. But I never get free beers or anything. [laughing] I don’t know. There were a lot of creative people who worked on Captain Planet, who did a great job, but when they were originally presenting us with theme songs, they sent us these recordings. They would get people to do theme songs, and I think they do them kind of for free, because they want to get the residuals. I didn’t know that at the time. And I remember listening to them, and one of them went — literally it was like this. It went, “Captain Planet, do-do-do-do-do-do, Captain Planet, do-do-do-do-do-do, Captain Planet, do-do-do-do,” and it went like that for 30 seconds, and that was the theme song. And I’m like, “No.” And then another one was, it was sort of weird. It was like, it went something like, “Power, got the power, got the power, got the power, got the power, got the power, got the power. We’ve got white people, we’ve got black people, we’ve got green people, we’ve got yellow people, we’ve got pur —” It was like, who? Again, it’s like they’re sending them out to songwriters who aren’t thinking about the content of the show. So I started writing lyrics, and I probably wrote enough for, you know — I guess that the theme song might be a minute, actually, at the end of the show with the credits and everything. I don’t know. It’s either 30 seconds or a minute. But I — my original song was much longer, and they wanted some repetitions, so we compromised by repeating, “Captain Planet, he’s our hero, going to take pollution down to zero.” That’s, you know, the refrain that’s repeated.

 

Music
Gonna take pollution down to zero/Hey, ba-da. Guys who like to loot/Loot and plunder/You’ll pay for this, Captain Planet!/You’ll pay for this, Captain Planet!/We’re the Planeteers/You can be one, too, ‘cause saving our planet is the thing to do.