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K-Pop Demon Hunters: How a cartoon band topped the charts · The Front

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. There's a band you need to know about,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Hunt Tricks, three smoking hot Korean girls. They're dominating music
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  Speaker 1: charts internationally and they've got a smash hit movie on Netflix.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: And they're not even real. They're cartoon characters. That is,
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  Speaker 1: they're the stars of k pop Demon Hunters, a Netflix
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  Speaker 1: animated blockbuster that has swept up every kid in Australia
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  Speaker 1: and much of the rest of the world in the
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: magic of their adventure. But this isn't some ai nonsense.
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  Speaker 1: This is real music, written and performed by real people,
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  Speaker 1: all wrapped up in a kids movie that's like the
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: New Toy Story, a cultural phenomenon will be talking about
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: for a long time. Yet if you've never heard of this,
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  Speaker 1: or if you're a super fan, you'll be singing along
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  Speaker 1: by the end of today's episode. Here's The Australian's audio
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  Speaker 1: lead and a musician in his own right.
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  Speaker 2: Jasper League, a song from an American animated film about
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  Speaker 2: Korean pop stars, is now topping the US charts.
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  Speaker 3: I was a girls dog, Jasper.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like the world might have ended. There's a
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  Speaker 1: cartoon at the top of the Billboard Music charts with
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  Speaker 1: a song that I actually quite.
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  Speaker 3: Like to.
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  Speaker 1: Go. Is this ridiculous this song Golden?
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  Speaker 4: No, it's not. I watched this movie for quote unquote
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  Speaker 4: research the other day, which was absurd in its own way.
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  Speaker 4: Like this forty one year old man watching K Pop
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  Speaker 4: Demon Hunters on my phone on my commute to work,
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  Speaker 4: blow and behold, I found myself totally transfixed.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you came into work and you will fully across
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: exactly what the Sarga voice had done wrong.
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  Speaker 4: That is the magic of this movie. And it's the
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  Speaker 4: magic of a lot of the songwriting as well, like
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  Speaker 4: there is nowhere for your mind to wander when under
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  Speaker 4: the onslaught of a K pop song.
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  Speaker 1: So what is K Pop Demon Hunters actually about? I
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  Speaker 1: asked the experts in my household.
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  Speaker 5: Guys, we're going to talk about K Pop Demon Hunters?
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  Speaker 6: Great, we love capop Demon Hunters. Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: How many times have you watched it? For in all
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  Speaker 5: the songs by heart? Right?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah?
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  Speaker 5: Okay, So can you tell me what the plot is?
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  Speaker 7: Well, is there this big demon fire king called Geema
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  Speaker 7: and he's the king of demons and he feeds on
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  Speaker 7: soul he kind of keeps the demons at his prisoners sorta,
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  Speaker 7: and so he was, like.
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  Speaker 1: Things get a bit convoluted here, Fire King. Gema's goal
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  Speaker 1: is to break the Honmon.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, the Honmon is like a barrier that keeps the
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  Speaker 6: demon world out of the human world.
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  Speaker 1: And it's a mystical creative force harnessed and protected by
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  Speaker 1: the all girl K pop group Hunterricks, made up of
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  Speaker 1: singers Roomy, Zoe and Mirror.
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  Speaker 6: Mirror is the black sheep of her family and she
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  Speaker 6: also once wore a sleeping bag to the Medgala and
• 3:42
  Speaker 6: like everyone was praising her for that.
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  Speaker 1: Because like Huntricks's sworn enemies are demon boy band Saga Boys.
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  Speaker 1: They were sent to the human world to do Gema's
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  Speaker 1: dirty work. They're fronted by Genu, who sold his soul
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  Speaker 1: to Gema in exchange for the voice of an angel.
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  Speaker 1: Like Blues legend Robert Johnson meeting the Devil at the Crossroads. Ultimately,
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  Speaker 1: Hunterricks need to beat Sga Boys at the Idle Awards
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  Speaker 1: to save the Hornmone and all of humanity.
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  Speaker 5: And how much do you love K pop Demon Hunters?
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  Speaker 7: Like?
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  Speaker 5: Out of ten.
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  Speaker 6: Eleven me nine.
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  Speaker 5: Is it the best movie you've ever seen. Yes.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I'm also joined by the Australians entertainment reporter Jordie Gray.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: She's conveniently just come back from a trip to Soul.
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  Speaker 8: There's so much bootleg merchandise and then you have the
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  Speaker 8: music just blasting, you know, tinny little speakers, or you
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  Speaker 8: go into the big K beauty stores and they'd be
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  Speaker 8: playing it. It took me a while to clock it
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  Speaker 8: because I hadn't heard the song Golden before going there,
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  Speaker 8: but I kept hearing the same song because it is
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  Speaker 8: so instantly memorable. I was like, what is this song
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  Speaker 8: that is following me?
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  Speaker 1: Are you surprised that Golden is the top of the
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  Speaker 1: Billboard charts? That there are three other songs or at
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  Speaker 1: least two other songs from K pop demon Hunters right
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  Speaker 1: at the top of the child was there six?
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  Speaker 3: Wow?
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  Speaker 8: Six songs in the top fifty. So Golden is number one,
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  Speaker 8: which is wild. But I think it also speaks to
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  Speaker 8: the absence of like the capital s song of the
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  Speaker 8: summer this year. Despite major releases from Lord Miley Cyrus
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  Speaker 8: the weekend, nothing has really crystallized into the song and
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  Speaker 8: that gap left space for the fictional K pop girl
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  Speaker 8: and boy groups just sort of sweep in.
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  Speaker 1: Jess, But what's going on in these songs? Why are
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  Speaker 1: babies emotional? Sort of love bar?
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  Speaker 4: I'm no K pop expert, but I've spent a lot
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  Speaker 4: of the last few days listening to K pop, and
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  Speaker 4: first of all, I've become a twice fan. I love them.
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  Speaker 4: Maybe if there's a musical formula, K pop is totally derivative,
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  Speaker 4: but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's very creatively derivative.
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  Speaker 4: So K pop songwriters and producers borrow from all these
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  Speaker 4: different styles. But what's interesting about it is their ability
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  Speaker 4: to combine different styles and elements into one tightly packed
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  Speaker 4: three minute pop song.
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  Speaker 1: There's a bit of Kelly Clarks and vibes, isn't there,
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  Speaker 1: And that the lyrics is sung at like full volume.
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  Speaker 1: I felt like my lungs were going to burst listening
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  Speaker 1: to the pre chorus of Golden.
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  Speaker 4: Maybe the one thing that the genre doesn't do at
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  Speaker 4: all is subtlety. Everything is kind of cranked up to eleven.
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  Speaker 4: So in a song like Golden, with this huge romantic
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  Speaker 4: melody starts to build in the pre course, Room, who
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  Speaker 4: is voiced by EJ in this case, she is kind
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  Speaker 4: of starting to hone in on the top of a
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  Speaker 4: register in the pre chorus. Then it gets bigger and
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  Speaker 4: then you go, Okay, surely that's it, and then it
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  Speaker 4: kind of explodes in the post chorus, and then she
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  Speaker 4: starts belting like what is at the absolute threshold of
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  Speaker 4: her vocal range, which was totally intentional to put the
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  Speaker 4: song in that key to sort of elicit that kind
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  Speaker 4: of vocal performance from her, But narrative wise, it also
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  Speaker 4: connects to the moments where she's really struggling to hit
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  Speaker 4: those notes in certain rehearsals and she starts to kind
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  Speaker 4: of lose her voice voices, and then the main melody
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  Speaker 4: is then also provided some amazing material for the film
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  Speaker 4: composer to use throughout the movie in different ways as well.
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  Speaker 1: This is taking me back, you know, fifteen years to
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  Speaker 1: the twenty tens, when there seemed to be a lot
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  Speaker 1: of songs around that had these massive, kind of romantic melodies.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, when I heard it, it made me think of
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  Speaker 4: songs like you Know Somebody that I used to know
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  Speaker 4: by Gautier or seas Chandelier. These sorts of songs are
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  Speaker 4: so hard to write, and I think when writers get
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  Speaker 4: it right, they always connect.
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  Speaker 1: It's interesting too that these songs are coming out of
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  Speaker 1: what's now you know, an industrial system like K pop
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  Speaker 1: is an industry, government funded industry, and yet they're able
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  Speaker 1: to manufacture music that seems to me quite magical.
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  Speaker 4: And you're not wrong, I mean, underestimate them at your peril,
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  Speaker 4: Like these songs are enormous, the singers are good, they're
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  Speaker 4: fun to listen to.
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  Speaker 3: I get it. Imagine that, yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 4: You know, in US pop music, if you look at
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: you know, off the top of my head, justin Bieber's
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  Speaker 4: latest album, it's obviously very important to him that it's cool,
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  Speaker 4: whereas with K pop it's unapologetically commercial and will the
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  Speaker 4: results speak for themselves.
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  Speaker 1: I want to geek out for a minute here. You've
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  Speaker 1: been in the office talking about something called six eight times.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like I studied music, but I have no
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  Speaker 1: idea what that means.
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  Speaker 3: What are you talking about?
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  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, it means that I'm punishing co worker,
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  Speaker 4: an annoying employee. Most rock and pop music is built
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  Speaker 4: around four to four or also known as common time,
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  Speaker 4: and the difference between four four and six eight is
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  Speaker 4: essentially about the amount of beats in the bar and
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  Speaker 4: how they're subdivided. So an example of a four to
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  Speaker 4: four song would be something like this, Golden's in six eight,
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  Speaker 4: six eighty is really having a moment with hits like Daisies,
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  Speaker 4: you lose control ordinary?
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  Speaker 3: Hang on, I know you hate ordinary?
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  Speaker 4: Come on, it's ordinary?
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  Speaker 1: Is that why you're so into Golden? Because you just
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: want the ordinary to stop being played in shop shopping?
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  Speaker 4: Maybe?
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  Speaker 7: Yeh?
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  Speaker 1: How big is this achievement for a Korean animated group
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  Speaker 1: to reach number one on the Billboard charts?
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  Speaker 8: Going by charts, they're more successful than both BTS and
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  Speaker 8: Black Pink, who are the two tent pole K pop
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  Speaker 8: acts in the UK. In the past decade, they have
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  Speaker 8: only been three bands that have hit number one. One
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  Speaker 8: of them was Little Mix, the other was like a
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  Speaker 8: super group you know they you know, we are the world,
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  Speaker 8: we are the children, and then the third has been
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  Speaker 8: Hunter Tricks. It's also interesting because the writer on a
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  Speaker 8: lot of the Little Mix songs worked on the K
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  Speaker 8: pop demon Hunter's soundtrack.
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  Speaker 1: Ah yeah, se, what do we know about the creatives
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  Speaker 1: who've actually made this happen?
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  Speaker 8: So the film's director, Maggie Kang pitched this idea of
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  Speaker 8: it's a K pop girl group and they hunt demon
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  Speaker 8: secretly to Sony seven years ago, the peak of BTS.
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  Speaker 8: So you've got greenlit basically immediately, and from what I've read,
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  Speaker 8: she met very little resistance, and I think it's because
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  Speaker 8: she just knows the world so well. That was what
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  Speaker 8: impressed me most about the film is that it didn't
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  Speaker 8: feel like a writer's room trying to cash in on
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  Speaker 8: like K pop hype. It just felt like someone that
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  Speaker 8: genuinely understood the culture making a movie that they wanted
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  Speaker 8: to see.
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  Speaker 1: It's super confident, isn't it so confident?
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  Speaker 8: Like within fifteen minutes, you're like, I've never seen anything
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  Speaker 8: like this before, and this is not what I thought
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  Speaker 8: it would be at all. And I also think that's
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  Speaker 8: something to the fact that it feels like scrolling TikTok
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  Speaker 8: watching this movie and just letting your brain go to
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  Speaker 8: soup in a very pleasurable way. Like it's very overstimulating
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  Speaker 8: but very comforting.
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  Speaker 4: Okay, this is our biggest show yet to the most.
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  Speaker 7: Songs, the most moves, which means the most garbloading for the.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 8: I was particularly taken by the early scene when they're
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  Speaker 8: on the private jet en route to their concert and
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  Speaker 8: they're all like scoffing food, which is something that actual
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  Speaker 8: katee pop stars are not allowed to.
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  Speaker 1: Do, no famously because Korean beauty standards don't allow for
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  Speaker 1: any scoffing.
• 13:08
  Speaker 8: No, no, no scuffing whatsoever. But that they are gorging
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  Speaker 8: on carbs. And it's a very specific choice of instant
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  Speaker 8: ramen pots okay type pre game ramen happy fans happy,
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  Speaker 8: which I thought was like so sly and in tune
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  Speaker 8: with the culture because there is an entire like stream
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  Speaker 8: of content, social media content where it's just people doing
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  Speaker 8: Korean grocery store halls and you just watch them eat.
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  Speaker 1: Oh there's bane. Yeah, so that's just like stuffing your face.
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  Speaker 8: It is stuffing your face, but this is piper specific
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  Speaker 8: to stuffing your face with food you buy at Korean
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  Speaker 8: grocery stores, which is its own like niche genre of content.
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  Speaker 8: So watching that, I was like, oh my gosh, it's amazing.
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  Speaker 8: It's just like being on my phone.
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  Speaker 1: This is why TikTok with revolutionaries because it was actually fun.
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  Speaker 8: Yeah, and the algorithm was so lawless and it just
• 14:04
  Speaker 8: fed you what you wanted, even though you didn't know
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  Speaker 8: that that's what you wanted. Like never in my life
• 14:09
  Speaker 8: have I sat down being like, my thing is watching
• 14:11
  Speaker 8: carpets being deep cleaned, but apparently it is.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So they're stuffing their faces on this plane and
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: then the demons take over the plane, right, and that
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: sort of starts the drama.
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  Speaker 8: Yes, and they get into a fight, and I think
• 14:24
  Speaker 8: the fighting in this movie is very clever because it's
• 14:26
  Speaker 8: not violent, and that way younger children can watch it
• 14:30
  Speaker 8: because it still has the thrills of action, but it's
• 14:32
  Speaker 8: you know, everything's kind of pink and purple and not
• 14:35
  Speaker 8: super scary.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: There's quite a lot of mockery of the fandom, isn't
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: there the scenes when crowds are going wild. The crowds
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: are ridiculous.
• 14:43
  Speaker 8: Yes, but that's just how crowds are these days. I'm
• 14:47
  Speaker 8: not gonna defame anyone on this podcast, but I do
• 14:49
  Speaker 8: know sudden people that wore a nappy to Laneway so
• 14:52
  Speaker 8: they could be front road for Charlie XCX. That's just
• 14:55
  Speaker 8: how that is the standard of fandom. Now, like you,
• 14:59
  Speaker 8: it drives people crazy.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: You've got to commit. You have to commit. Coming up,
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: Jordi breaks.
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  Speaker 1: The news that'll make my kids explode with excitement. It
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: was intriguing at the end of the movie, how we
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: sort of see behind the curtain a little bit. There's
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: some singers who I believe in the K pop band
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  Speaker 1: twice performing one of the songs.
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  Speaker 8: Yes, I believe that everyone that sings it's either a
• 15:43
  Speaker 8: real life former K pop artist or someone who went
• 15:47
  Speaker 8: through the training, which is why I think the song's
• 15:49
  Speaker 8: work so well, because there is that gloss of credibility,
• 15:52
  Speaker 8: like they are major pop songs.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: It is amazing how Netflix just keeps getting it right,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Like Adolescents for good or that's all anyone was talking about.
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  Speaker 3: Three months ago.
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  Speaker 8: Both K Pop Demon Hunters and Adolescents arrived with very
• 16:07
  Speaker 8: little fanfare. You just kind of slipped onto the streamers
• 16:10
  Speaker 8: and organically became these massive hits. I mean cap pop.
• 16:13
  Speaker 8: Demon Hunter's premier two months ago and now is the
• 16:17
  Speaker 8: most watched animated Netflix film of all time.
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  Speaker 6: Wow.
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  Speaker 3: I wonder if it was a mistake not to release
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: it in cinema.
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  Speaker 8: They're releasing it in cinemas this weekend.
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  Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yeah here in Australia.
• 16:27
  Speaker 8: In Australia, so there are special single long sessions for
• 16:30
  Speaker 8: K Pop Demon Hunters.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I will be at one of those.
• 16:32
  Speaker 8: Yeah, maybe I will too.
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  Speaker 5: You can come with us.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Jordy Gray is the Australian's entertainment reporter. You can read
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: her work anytime at the Australian dot com dot au.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Front was hosted by me Claire
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Harvey and produced by Jasper Leek, who edited the episode
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and also wrote our theme.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us on the Front this week.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Our team also includes Kristen Amiot, Leat, Sam mcglow, Tiffany Dimack,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Joshua Burton and Stephanie Coombs.