K-Pop Demon Hunters was a big winner at the Golden Globe Awards – as well as being named Best Animated Film, the Netflix hit won for Best Original Song with Golden.
Co-writer, singer and vocal producer Ejae (Kim Eun-jae) collected the trophy in California and was joined by her fellow performers in Huntr/x, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami.
Golden has amassed 1.3 billion streams on Spotify alone, while K-Pop Demon Hunters is the most popular Netflix film ever.
Speaking for our Hitmakers feature, Ejae described the background to the huge hit.
“I was in Korea doing songwriting camps for K-Pop Demon Hunters and also worked on the songs at home in New York, mostly from my closet!” she said. “It’s my little corner, my safety zone. I vocal produce and record myself, so I’m very flexible with where I can work. I sang all the demos except for two songs on the soundtrack and for Golden I was also vocal producing and did all of the harmonies.”
Speaking before the Golden Globes win, Ejae told Music Week she was driving to the dentist when she came up with the melody.
“The track had this nice, bittersweet kind of sound and sometimes the inspiration just comes instantly,” she said. “The hook came out really fast, but to finish the whole song took a lot of fine tuning over a month or two. Because this is a film, the storyline matters; it’s not just a pop song, it’s integrated as a huge part of the narrative. So that took a lot of back and forth with the director.”
Ejae said her animated character Rumi had to hit a high note in the scene – which has made it a challenging song for fans to sing along to.
“With the lyrics, we knew the scene had to have the word ‘gold’ in it and the musical directors told us the character Rumi needed to hit a high note, almost unrealistically high,” she told Music Week. “So it is all on purpose that Golden is really hard to sing! I didn’t just make it hard, I would never do that!
“I truly found my range writing these songs, I did not know I could hit notes that high. The director wanted Rumi to have incredible vocal range, so I had to stretch myself and do vocal gymnastics. It is a difficult song, the ranges are pretty crazy. I’m also more of a low-tone singer, I have more alto, so hitting the note was crazy. But also the line distribution, because I’m singing a lot of the parts, breathing was very important.”
The director wanted Rumi to have incredible vocal range, so I had to stretch myself and do vocal gymnastics
Ejae
Golden spent 10 weeks at No.1 in the UK and remains in the Top 10 with 1,414,630 chart units to date (Official Charts Company). With consumption of 1,332,632 units last year, it was the fourth biggest track of 2025.
Golden is only the second No.1 by an act wholly or predominantly from South Korea following Gangnam Style, which topped the chart for Psy in 2012.
While the track was written for a film, Ejae said she “also went into the song personally, it was emotional”.
“I cried singing the demo because I needed that song during that time,” she told Music Week. “I was going through a hard time, I felt like I wanted to give up songwriting because things weren’t really working out. So, Golden was important to me.”
Ejae said the lyric ‘gonna be, gonna be golden’ “felt like magic, it was meant to be” after it emerged in the writing process.
“I related to the lyrics because it’s a hopeful song and what Rumi is going through with hiding her shame and pushing that aside to focus on her dream was totally relatable to me as a former K-pop trainee,” she said. “That thing of putting your best foot forward, working hard and yearning for a dream.”
Golden is credited to Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo, Park Hong Jun, Kim Eun-jae (Ejae) and Mark Sonnenblick.
“Golden stands out because it’s very different from a musical standpoint, it’s a modern pop song,” said Ejae. “My co-writer Mark Sonnenblick is from a musical theatre background and I’m from a K-Pop background and that hybrid was very important. It was about making sure the lyric is still part of the story while still trying to have a very pop approach to it.
“Pop music today is very focused on the artists and their personal journeys and things being about themselves. Songs are not really about something like hope; they’re usually about, like, being a baddie or personal relationships, break-up songs or love songs. But this song is very… It was a hard song to write. It’s a fine line [and could be seen as] cringey, but the way the movie shows it – the character build, the depth, the lyric and the personal touch – creates something that maybe people want, a song that’s hopeful. You don’t really see that in pop music today.”
Ejae suggested that Golden has a lineage in classic pop.
“I study and listen to a lot of pop music and, chord-wise and melodically, it mostly stays in the same range, whereas Golden is very different,” she explained. “You saw that a long time ago in the ’70s and ’80s, where things were more melodic. So it’s bringing that back. Golden is a great example of K-Pop, too, because Korea likes to experiment. K-Pop is very maximalist, very pristine and I think Golden is a representation of that.”
Although the writing team were confident Golden had the potential to be a smash, Ejae recognised that its success depended on the film.
“When you’re writing for film, there are so many different layers: you’re not just writing a song and then giving it to an artist,” said Ejae. “In a way, it’s also freeing. You don’t have to think, ‘Hey, what are we writing today?’ because you know exactly what you have to write about. It’s just trying to execute what the director is envisioning to make sure you hit the bull’s eye.”
I was going through a hard time, I felt like I wanted to give up songwriting… so Golden was important to me
Ejae
The Success of Golden was not in isolation. The K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack album has spent 28 out of 29 weeks at No.1 on the compilations chart. The OST release has consumption to date of 462,651 units (19,359 physical copies, 9,439 downloads and 433,853 sales-equivalent streams). It was the most streamed album released in 2025.
In the year-end overall singles Top 100, K-Pop Demon Hunters was also represented by Soda Pop by Saja Boys – Andrew Choi, Neckwav, Danny Chung, Kevin Woo, SamUil Lee at No.36 (715,102 units), Your Idol by Saja Boys at No.44 (624,272 units), How It’s Done by Huntr/x at No.67 (527,895 units) and What It Sounds Like by Huntr/x at No.90 (475,664 units).
When Golden was first realised, Ejae soon identified its viral impact on TikTok. Following its huge success, she is now looking at further opportunities as a recording artist as well as a songwriter.
“I got in on this project as a songwriter and was very grateful that the director asked me to sing as Rumi,” she told Music Week. “I just didn’t expect this amount of attention, or people actually being interested in me singing. That’s new territory I’m looking into, because I never really saw myself as an artist, but it’s something that might happen soon, with a single…”
PHOTO: Audrey Nuna, Ejae and Rei Ami (Huntr/x) win at the 83rd Annual Golden Globes (Photo by Gilbert Flores/2026GG/Penske Media via Getty Images)
