Mabel's Pokémon Fandom Comes Full Circle With New Single 'Take It Home'

When Mabel was 5, she swapped her Pokémon cards in school. Now, 20 years later, the British pop star is celebrating her fandom in a different way as part of the franchise's colossal 25-year anniversary.

On Friday (July 16), the pop star unleashed a new song called "Take It Home" as part of the P25 Music Program, joining the likes of Post Malone, Katy Perry and J Balvin. The three-minute track hears the singer offer an uplifting ode to friendship and will appear on Pokémon 25: The Album, which is due via Capitol Records later this fall. "Tommy Brown, TBHits, sent me a rough version of the record and I was like, 'Some of this could work for something like Pokémon,'" the star told iHeartRadio. "I reworked it to make it really be about friendship and really focus around that. It's just fun and it makes people feel good."

It's that camaraderie that ties together the track and her nostalgic memories of enjoying the franchise as a child. "Pokémon was a big thing in my house. I'm one of four kids, so it was one thing that we all bonded over," she recalled. "I think when I first really got into it was when I started going to school."

"Take It Home" arrived in conjunction with a dreamy music video, where the star lays down in her hotel room, puts Pokémon on TV to get some shut-eye and ends up in a whimsical world, with appearances from Pikachu and Jigglypuff. "We wanted to create that alternate reality. And for me, that is really important because I'm such a daydreamer," she explained. "I'm so often just off in my own little world, just imagining things. It was really fun, creating the parallel of the two worlds, the reality and then the Pokémon fantasy world."

The song also comes amid her re-entry to the pop scene with her recently released single, "Let Them Know," a self-empowerment anthem that serves as the lead single from her in-the-works sophomore effort. The uptempo track, which was created after listening to plenty of Madonna's catalog, is set to mark a new phase in her discography with music for the dancefloors. "I'd been on my own possible journey of getting to know myself, and really being comfortable in my skin, and being comfortable with who I am," she said of her personal growth during quarantine. "I wanted to make a song that inspires people to be who they really are as well."

In her road to self-discovery, Mabel said that she's been able to better versions of herself. "I know myself and I'm confident in who that person is, and I'm so ready to show people," she declared towards the end of our conversation. "And I feel like it's made me a better performer. It's made me a better songwriter. I think 'progress' is the keyword."