‘Golden’ From ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Just Won K-Pop’s Very First Grammy

The hit song, a demon-slaying self-empowerment anthem, was recognized as the Best Song Written for Visual Media

February 3, 2026

Audrey Nuna, Ejae and Rei Ami at the Grammys on February 1, 2026 Amy Sussman / Getty Images

“It’s so incredible to have the song ‘Golden’ being sung all over the world—singing the Korean lyrics word by word, it means so much,” Kim Eun-jae, known to fans as Ejae, said on February 1 after accepting the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media. The victory marked the first time a K-pop song has taken home a Grammy.

Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami provided the singing voices for the three members of the fictional K-pop girl group Huntr/x in Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans’ 2025 animated movie, KPop Demon Hunters, which smashed records to become the most-watched movie in Netflix history.

As Elle Hunt writes for the Guardian, the movie centers on the members of Huntr/x, who are “responsible for protecting humanity from supernatural threats with their combat skills and empowering pop.” Their main rivals are the Saja Boys, a competing boy band whose members moonlight as evil demons.

The songs that Huntr/x uses in battle have proved effective in more than just demon fighting: They have also skyrocketed to global renown. KPop Demon Hunters was the first-ever soundtrack to have four songs in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. It also reached top-ten status in 93 countries. Kayti Burt of Time magazine attributes the soundtrack’s success to the fact that it’s more meaningful to the plot than a typical background score. “It is integral to the story,” writes Burt. “All of the film’s music holds the power to influence its in-world listeners.”

However, none of the songs made a bigger impression than the Grammy-winning “Golden,” which ruled the top slot on Billboard’s Global 100 for eight weeks and became Spotify’s seventh most-streamed song of 2025.

The Grammy went to songwriters Ejae, Park Hong Jun, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo and Mark Sonnenblick. “Golden” comes at a crucial moment in KPop Demon Hunters, when Huntr/x is trying to seal a barrier between the real and supernatural worlds. With that scene of the film already planned, Ejae was tasked with writing a song that would express the characters’ emotions in that moment, Ejae told Variety’s Jazz Tangcay last year.

Ejae added that the melody came to her first, while she was on the way to a dentist appointment. The idea for the titular “gonna be golden” lyrics came to her later, and she built out a song that speaks to self-empowerment using both English and Korean lyrics.

“It was important for our co-director Maggie Kang to have Korean in the lyrics,” Ejae told Variety. “And I just love that it’s not just the verses; it was in the actual song too.”

After a record-breaking year for the KPop Demon Hunters film, many critics were unsurprised by the success of “Golden” at the Grammys. At the same time, others point out that award recognition for the K-pop genre is overdue.

Quick fact: What is K-pop?

The genre—which draws on inspiration from pop, rock, hip-hop and dance music—began in South Korea in the 1990s and spread across the globe.

“For years, the Recording Academy has snubbed K-pop acts that have set record-breaking standards, such as BTS, Seventeen and Stray Kids,” Areum Jeong, a Korean studies scholar at Arizona State University, told the Associated Press’ Maria Sherman a few weeks before the Grammys. “I think one of the main reasons is that the Western world is still so resistant to non-English lyrics.”

Meanwhile, Mathieu Berbiguier, a Korean studies scholar at Carnegie Mellon University, told the AP that “Golden,” along with other songs that feature both English and Korean lyrics, might help bring K-pop into the pop music mainstream.

With the Grammy win for “Golden” secured, the artists of KPop Demon Hunters still have other award shows to anticipate. The film is in the running for Best Animated Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards, this March, where “Golden” was also nominated for Best Original Song—the first-ever Oscar nomination in the K-pop genre.

After the Oscar nominations were announced, Ejae reflected to Billboard’s Hannah Dailey that, as a child, she was made fun of for liking K-pop music.

“It’s incredible,” she added, “to see [K-pop] just growing more and more and being part of a film that’s really showcasing it in the most authentic way.”

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