“KPop Demon Hunters” and its song “Golden” continue to dominate the music world seven months after the movie’s release.
Earlier this week, the song reached 5x platinum status, adding to its record-breaking achievement.
It took a strong group of songwriters to bring “Golden” to life. The group includes EJAE, who also provides Rumi’s singing voice, Mark Sonnenblick, and Korean hit factory The Black Label – IDO (Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Zhun.
Regarding the collaboration, Zhun told Variety through an interpreter, “The production team wanted to work on a drum loop. They wanted a very specific BPM between 100 and 120, so we developed the drum loop first and worked from there.”
When developing the first demo, Nam explained that the song followed a very traditional structure of KPop. “We had two voices, two verses, and a bridge.”
Additionally, we received a note from the film’s directors, Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, with a very specific request: the song needed a high note. “This was a very important element to the song itself,” Zhun said.
The note is A5 and was intentionally written by EJAE. EJAE also needed to play this sound when recording vocals. When IDO first heard about it, Zhun says their reaction was one of awe. “I didn’t expect it to include so many high notes because there’s a limit to how high a sound can go. It’s really incredible to see her play those notes.”
In addition to working on the music for “Golden” and the songs sung by female group Huntr/x for the film, IDO also wrote the music for Saja Boys.
In writing the music, Zhun explains that the film’s music producer, Ian Eisendrath, played a key role in creating two distinct sounds for the band in the film. “They play completely different roles within the story itself, and it was relatively easy to approach them in a different way. The Saja Boys are actually an evil group that pretends to be kind, while the Hunter/x are a group expressing frustration, and they are the heroines of the story itself. He went on to say that Eisendrath, whose experience as a music producer helped him fuse the music with the visual image of writing film scores, was instrumental in providing feedback to help the songs come together. Zhun said, “We come from KPop and didn’t have much experience working on music for visual media. He directed us and played a guiding role in creating these two sounds. I can feel his influence and direction, and how the music is integrated with the visual image, because it feels completely different from the music on its own.”
Regarding the lyrics that resonated with her the most, Lee said that the lyrics, “I’m done hiding, I’m shining now” represent Rumi’s inner growth. “That moment really moved me.”
For Nam and Dung, it was having Korean lyrics featured in a song that became an international hit. “It brings me great pride. And seeing people singing along to these Korean lyrics is a very moving moment for me.”
