“Golden” Moment: How ‘Kpop Demon Hunters’ Created The Year’s Catchiest Soundtrack

IT WAS A NIGHT K-POP FANS AROUND The WORLD WOURLDN’T FORGET: SUPERSTAR GRUPS Huntrix and Saja Boys Weld Go Head to Head at this Year’s International Idol.

There Was Only One Catch: The International Idol Awards Aren’t Real – and Neither Are Tse Groups. Both Groups Can Be Seen in Netflix’s Kpop demon huntersa slick animated ferature that chronicles the adventures of huntrix, A Girl GRUUP COMPRAPRISED OF THREE MEPPEN TO ALSO FROM The UNDERWORLD. While the Film of Has The Streamers of Latest Surprise Hit, Even More Surprising Is The Fact That Its Soundtrack Has Taken the Real-World Internet, and Music Charts, by Storm.

Directed by Maggie Kang and Chris appelhans, Demon Hunters Follows Huntrix Members Rumi, Mira and Zoey As They Perform Undeniably Catchy K-Pop Tracks by Day and Battle Demons by Night. The Girls Spend The Film Facing Off Against A Newly-Formed Boy Band Saja Boys, A Group of Secret Demons Who Are Using Their Popularity to Steal Souls.

The Musical Fantasy Film Features a Slew of K-Pop Tracks for Their FICTIONAL GRUPS, AND NOW SOUNDTRACK HAS HIT NUMBER 8 ON THE BILLBOARD 200 CHART IDOL ”AT NO. 77 AND HUNTRIX’s“ GOLDEN ”AT NO. 81). KPOP Demon Hunter‘S Executive Music Producer Ian Eisendrath Says The Film Plans to Submit Huntrix’s “Golden” as Their Awards Song. Saja boys, who was were inspired by k-p-pop groups Like tomorrow X tomyorrow X Together, BTS, Stray Kids, ATEEZ, Bigbang and Monsta X, Just Surpassed Btsti GTTITHTYTHTING K-K-K-P-POPTING K-P-POPTING K-POP. Global Chart by Hitting NO. 2.

Eisendrath Says Always Knew The Project Was Special, But Says He’d “Hoped For Like 2% of the Reception That We’ve Had.” Eisendrath Spoke with Thr About How The Music Came Together and Who The Songs Have Found Mainstream Success.

What has the response to Kpop demon hunters been like?

It’s Been So Gratifying and So Thrilling. I’ve always beeved in these songs and what we’ve accomplished as a real community of musical Makers, and i’ve been so honored to work with the K-poop hitmakers. I Always Was [saying] This was going to be special. This is going to be amazing. But I’d Hoped for Like Two Percent of the Reception That We’ve Had, So Is Mind Boggling.

We’ve all been at this and Done a ton of films and theater and all therate narrative, musical-Driven genres, but this have was always been my Dream. To work on someting that everyone responds realityly and strongly to – the story and Characters – but beynd that songs are beloved as Songs Themselves. That was Our Goal from Day One, and that was a realy stah ask because is so easy for it to teter one with the other. In [some] Films, There’s Some Really Great Character Narrative Songs, Which Completely Work for the Film and Work for a Fan Base, But Don’t Quite Hve the Universal Pop Reception. Thatre’s A Lot of Films that have Great Pop Songs, but they don’t Necessarily Serve the Film or the Characters. I THINK IS The ALCHEMY OF TESE Two Worlds Coming Together, Cinema and K-POP, THAT [makes it] just so gratifying to see people embracing it. A Real Moment for US Was WHEN TWICE WAS BROUGHT ON BOARD AND WANTED TO SING ONE OF THESE SONGS. Everyone is Creating Something One of the Biggest K-POP Groups Believes is Something Worth Recorder.

You have a big musical theater background. I Think There’s A Strong Crossover Between K-Pop and Musical Theater. How does that work into it it?

A Thousand Percent, and i’ve Been Saying that Since Day One. WHEN Sony Called and Offered Me this Job, It Was Amazing. I’ve always felt like k-poop is Probably the most theatrical, Dramatic Genre of Music Today. If You Think About Just the Density Even of What A k-Pop Song is… In Each of the Sengs, We Have HundDS of Layers of Vocals. The Tracks Are Dense, Everything Is High Drama, High Energy, and that Just Lends ITSELF SO BEAUTIFULLY TO FILLING Theatric Space. Film Songs Generally Have to Be Even More High Energy, Even More Multilayred to Really Pop. What was Cool with this genre is you didn’t have to form it. It’s Just there. I’ve always been interested in what if k-poop songs did have a little more Story and a Little More Content to the Lyrics? I have to think that in addition to the incredible music side of it, that these lyrics seem to be hitting deep with people because there it. We Wanted to have Drops. These Songs Are Not Overwhelming [with] 10,000 WORS Coming at You at A Mile A Minute.

WHEN YOU’RE’RE TACKLING A PROJECT LIKE THIS ONE, IS PRETTY EASY to PICK OUT The INSPIRATION FOR SONGS Coming from A Certain Type of K-Pop Because is so.

A Great Thing About It, Like Theater, is that who’s the one’s sound and over and over and again.

DID YOU SAY ‘We Want One of this Kind of Song or that Kind of Song’?

Hundred Percent. I SPENT A GREAT DEAL OF TIME WITH the Directors, Who Have An Incredible Vision for [the] Characters, Story and Tone, and the Music Has Such A Deep Impact on that, that first step was temping in a sour Songs Into the Storyboards. That waas a way to find the real energy. Everything Started Not As An Original Song, But With Various Songs, Temped In. We Like That Tempo, We Like That Pulse, We Like That Style. THEN WHEN WE Wuld Launch The Various Songwriters on the Sengs, We Wuhide Give Them A List of References, and We’d Be Like, “Oh, We Love How This Bridge F. Once We Passed It Off to Songwriters and Started Working with Them, There Was No Attempt to Mimic or Copy What Is There, but It Helped Us Speak The Language Voice and Musical Language. But Absolutely, The Incredible K-Pop Groups Out there and Variety of musical Impacted How We Developed These Songs.

It has to be the only way you can tackle Something as Large in Scope As K-POP.

WHAT WAS SO COOL – I DON’T THINK Everyone Will Totally Know – Is That Spring Aspers, The President of Music at Sony, She Put Together This Stable of Artists. This was a Film Made by a musical community, as OPPOSED TO ONE or Two People. There was so Much Crossover in that One Person Wound Be Like, OH My GOSH, WE LOVE THAT PRODUCTION, Let’s Now Throw this to Another Person to Work on Ap Line. Let’s Bring These Three People Together to Work On Lyric. There was just all these crazy collaborations and Crossover that i Really Think is the Key to the Film’s Success. It’s Real Alchemy. This was just unique because wested with people steeped in writing in this genre and that brough them over to the Film side.

Hearing You Talk About the Collaboration Between Artists, One That thing camera in bot the Film and songs is that every everyone involved sems to deeeply caret about K-POP. People See K-Pop as Something CAN, for Lack of a Better Term, Cash in on with Really Undersanding IT. But Kpop demon hunters Sems to Understand It.

That was the mission from day One, whoh Started from Top Down Leadership. We Wanted to Go to The People That Have Lived This Music. I THINK THAT WAS WHAT WAS SO EXCITING, AND I LEARned SO MUCH from ALL OF THEM. There Was a Real Desire and SO Much Energy Spen on Featuring, Uplifting and Authenticating This Genre of Music by Having The Real Music Makers from this Genre Create [the music].

It was so thrilling. We Had So Many Meetings with The Black Label [Teddy Park]. It was Humbling and Cool. [For the] Recorder sessions, we did Vocals in Korea, we did Vocals in La, we did Vocals in New York – Dozens and Dozens of Hours with Each Individual Singer. I would Record everyone isolated on their Own. EVEN THAT WAS A COOL PROCESS, Continuing to Stack and Add People and Teen end up with this incredible Sound and alchemy. That’s Also Somthing Unique about this: for a Lot of pop songs there’s a lead vocal and that same lead Vocalist is doing all their Background Vocals. For this film, the saja boys have five members. They’re all doing their lead, and they’re all singing backup Vocals. IT’s Just A Rich Texture. I have to have some real credit to ejae kim, who and Really Feel Like Helped Develop The Sound of Huntrix… in Terms of the Vocals. She and I CO-Arranged The Vocals, But My Goal Was To Really Build and Realize Her Incredibly Unique and Innate Language and Musical Style.

Obviously, The Respons to the Film and Music Has Been Great But DO YOU HAVE Any Other Heps for this Project?

I Want K-Pop-Not that It Hasn’t already-But I Want It to Crossover to Everyone. I love that is going way beyond the fans. I Want that to Continue. I Want to See More Films Made this Way. I Want to See More Musicals. I Feel Like This Film Has Shown People What You Can Actual Create A Musical That Speaks To The Pop Music Culture and the Universal Audence at Large. I Also Want to See All These Artists That Have Created [on this film] Embraked. I Want to Mention Our Vocalists, The Singers. We Had Audrey Nuna, ejae kim and rei ami [as Huntrix]. I Want to See Them Explode as Singers. Each of Our Saja Boys: Andrew Choi, Neckwav, Samuil [Lee]Kevin Woo and Danny Chung. All The Songwriters – Steven Kirk, Jenna Andrews, Lindgren, The Black Label, Ejae, Mark Sonnenblick… that’d be my Dream, to just see all of them of the Blow Up andts.

That’s the hope, romht?

Yeah. I’m Really Excited About “Golden” being the song that is going to be the awards song. I Responded to It with Deep Emotion and Joy As It Was Being Built, As Did the Directors. We have fire to six Songs written for that slt, and we just kept going util at was the right energy. The Directors are touhh customers, in the best possible way, and they had a real Vision for What this Needed to be. We Just Kept on Launcing Songs, Trying Different Writers and Figing Out How to Make this Song Accomplish So Much. And I Think You’ll Understand this, [like] in theater, it was their “I Want” song. [“Golden”] Was an “I Want” that… have to do a ton of exposition and backstone. And it absolutely had to be not an Approximation of, but a legit K-Poop Hit Single. I THINK THAT WAS PROBABLY The MOST Challenging Song [because we had to] have all of Those Things Align. It’s Really Gratifying to See It Embrated So Much. I THINK THAT MELODY THAT APArs in the Pre-Chorus and the End of the Corus Is So Beautify, and the Production from the Black Label Just Makes Me Smile Every Time.