It was a night K-Pop fans around the world wouldn’t forget: Superstar groups Huntrix and Saja Boys would go head to head at this year’s International Idol Awards.
There was only one catch: the International Idol Awards aren’t real — and neither are those groups. Both groups can be seen in Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters, a slick animated feature that chronicles the adventures of Huntrix, a girl group comprised of three members who just happen to also fight monsters from the underworld. While the film has become the streamers 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 groups, and now the soundtrack has hit number 8 on the Billboard 200 chart, and produced two entries on Billboard’s Hot 100 (Saja Boy’s “Your 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 were inspired by K-pop groups like Tomorrow X Together, BTS, Stray Kids, ATEEZ, BigBang and Monsta X, just surpassed BTS as the highest charting K-pop boy group on Spotify’s daily global chart by hitting No. 2 (BTS’ 2020 single “Dynamite” hit No. 3, although members of the group have hit the top spot as soloists).
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 why 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 believed in these songs and what we’ve accomplished as a real community of music makers, and I’ve been so honored to work with these K-pop 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 it’s mind boggling.
We’ve all been at this and done a ton of films and theater and all these narrative, music-driven genres, but this has always been my dream. To work on something that everyone responds really emotionally and strongly to — the story and characters — but beyond that these songs are beloved as songs themselves. That was our goal from day one, and that was a really steep ask because it’s so easy for it to teeter one way or 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 have the universal pop reception. Then there’s a lot of films that have great pop songs, but they don’t necessarily serve the film or the characters. I think it’s the alchemy of these 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 that one of the biggest K-pop groups believes is something worth recording.
The fictional girl group Huntrix from ‘KPop Demon Hunters.’
Courtesy of Netflix
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?
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-pop 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 these songs, we have hundreds of layers of vocals. The tracks are dense, everything is high drama, high energy, and that just lends itself so beautifully to filling the theatrical space. Film songs generally have to be even more high energy, even more multilayered to really pop. What was cool with this genre is you didn’t have to force it. It’s just there. I’ve always been interested in what if K-pop 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 is such density and depth to what is being said without getting in the way of it. We wanted to have drops. These songs are not overwhelming [with] 10,000 words coming at you at a mile a minute.
When you’re tackling a project like this one, it’s pretty easy to pick out the inspiration for songs coming from a certain type of K-pop because it’s so varied.
A great thing about it, like theater, is that the whole thing needs to not be the same sound over and over and over 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 the first step was temping in other songs into the storyboards. That was 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 would launch the various songwriters on these songs, we would give them a list of references, and we’d be like, “Oh, we love how this bridge feels because of these specific details.” 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 same language, and then obviously our film has its own voice and musical language. But absolutely, the incredible K-pop groups out there and variety of music impacted how we developed these songs.
Saja Boys from ‘KPop Demon Hunters.’
Courtesy of Netflix
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 would be like, oh my gosh, we love that production, let’s now throw this to another person to work on a top 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 we started with people steeped in writing in this genre and then brought them over to the film side.
Hearing you talk about the collaboration between artists, one thing that came across in both the film and songs is that everyone involved seems to deeply care about K-pop. People can see K-pop as something they can, for lack of a better term, cash in on without really understanding it. But KPop Demon Hunters seems to understand it.
That was the mission from day one, which 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 spent 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] recording sessions, we did vocals in Korea, we did vocals in L.A., 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 then end up with this incredible sound and alchemy. That’s also something 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 throw some real credit to EJAE Kim, who I 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.
Saja Boys’ Jinu (voiced by Ahn Hyo-Seop) and Huntrix’s Rumi (voiced by Arden Cho) in the Netflix film.
Courtesy of Netflix
Obviously, the response to the film and music has been great but do you have any other hopes for this project?
I want K-pop — not that it hasn’t already — but I want it to crossover to everyone. I love that it’s 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 that you can actually create a musical that speaks to the pop music culture and the universal audience at large. I also want to see all these artists that have created [on this film] embraced. 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 blow up and for it all to win a bunch of awards.
That’s the hope, right?
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 had five to six songs written for that slot, and we just kept going until it was the right energy. The directors are tough customers, in the best possible way, and they had a real vision for what this needed to be. We just kept on launching songs, trying different writers and figuring 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 … had to do a ton of exposition and backstory. And it absolutely had to be not an approximation of, but a legit K-pop 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 embraced so much. I think that melody that appears in the pre-chorus and the end of the chorus is so beautiful, and the production from The Black Label just makes me smile every time.