The biggest song from the biggest movie of the year is now a contender for one of the biggest awards in music. It might sound inevitable, but it’s actually pretty weird.
“Golden,” the most unavoidable bop from the animated kids movie KPop Demon Hunters, has been the No. 1 song on the Billboard Global 200 for 14 weeks. The film is Netflix’s most popular movie of all time, with more than 325 million views and counting. People even left their couches to see it in theaters, and it dominated the box office during its brief run. Kids recreated the film’s most popular looks for Halloween and beyond, and adults say they love it, too.
“Golden” is performed by the fictional band Huntr/x, voiced by singers EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami. In response to the news of the song’s nominations, EJAE, who’s one of the song’s co-writers, told Variety, “I’m not able to digest this time. I’m still in shock.”
But given how massively popular “Golden” is, it’s not entirely surprising that the Recording Academy, the group of musical professionals behind the Grammy Awards, gave it a nod for Song of the Year, one of its top prizes. What’s unusual is the fact that it’s a song from a film made for kids — and it’s K-pop, a genre that’s rarely recognized by the Grammys.
Zoey, Rumi and Mira from Kpop Demon Hunters. (Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection)
It’s not unheard of for a song from a kid’s movie to be nominated for a major award — hits from The Lion King earned multiple nods in 1995, and “A Whole New World” from Aladdin won in 1994 — but they rarely transcend the soundtrack categories to contend for the top prizes of the night. “Let It Go” from Frozen and “Happy” from Despicable Me 2 might be earworms woven into the very fabric of pop culture, but they weren’t Song of the Year nominees.
KPop Demon Hunters stands out in that regard, too, because it’s a brand new slice of intellectual property without the backing of familiar characters, Disney or nostalgia. It’s wholly new, and its bubble gum pop music and infectiously bright visuals have made it an obsession.
That’s the calling card for much of K-pop, which has been quietly zooming toward mainstream domination for years. The genre, which consists largely of South Korean boy and girl groups, has notoriously intense fans who obsessively promote their favorite artists, like BTS.
“Fans become evangelists for their favorite K-pop artist among their friends, helping expand the artist’s fan base exponentially,” Serona Elton, interim vice dean and chair of the music industry program at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, told Yahoo in September.
The intensity of K-pop fans has paid off: Now, it’s not so unique to love the genre. There’s another K-Pop star up for Song of the Year: Rosé, a member of the K-pop girl group Blackpink, is up for the award for her collaboration with Bruno Mars, “Apt.” It’s also pure, unadulterated pop and includes Korean lyrics, signalling that this year was a turning point for the genre’s acceptance in U.S. culture.
KPop Demon Hunters is nominated for four Grammys total, which does more than just crown it as a massive musical success — it validates its popularity. Music professionals have dubbed it worthy of honor in addition to being inescapable. Whether you’re listening to the radio, letting Spotify’s algorithm dictate your streaming habits, bopping to whatever your kids are into or hunting for the best possible songs determined by the people who make them, KPop Demon Hunters is totally unavoidable. Maybe it should be rewarded for that.
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