Nekujak
My muse is demanding better working hours
One of last year's biggest pop songs was Golden from the K-Pop Demon Hunters movie. It topped the Billboard charts for multiple weeks, won the Golden Globe for best song, was nominated for a best song Grammy, is up for an Oscar, and is undeniably one of the key contributors to K-Pop's rapidly-spreading global popularity.
It's also a damn good song on its own merits - the melody, lyrics, music, production, etc. are all top-notch - even Rick Beato was impressed during one of his Spotify top 10 rundowns. And while it's clearly packaged as K-Pop, it's actually not a full on K-Pop style song. It's more of a hybrid that straddles K-Pop and modern show tune styles, which makes sense, considering its role in an animated film that's very Disney-adjacent, and the film's music director having a Broadway background.
The song's primary writers, responsible for the topline and lyrics, are Ejae and Mark Sonnenblick. Soon after the movie and song were released, Ejae's backstory emerged and became an integral part of the song's lore.
Her childhood and teen years were devoted to rigorous training within Korea's highly structured K-Pop artist development system. But after years of hard work, she never got signed to a K-Pop act and eventually aged out of the system (before she was 20
) and was essentially kicked to the curb. Having no other skills beyond her K-Pop performer training, the future seemed bleak.
Ultimately, she decided to teach herself how to use a DAW and started writing songs, one of which, became a minor Korean hit for a K-Pop act. She moved to New York to further her music studies and make connections, and was still struggling when she got the call to be on the writing team for the K-Pop Demon Hunters movie.
Not only was she a key writer, but the film's producers ultimately wanted her to sing all the female-led songs in the movie, which was amazing, considering one of the main reasons for her rejection by the K-Pop system in Korea, was because they felt her voice was too "husky" and "dark".
The rest is history. It's a great redemption story, and an encouraging example of the old proverb, "When a door closes, another opens."
In this video, Ejae and Sonnenblick discuss in detail how Golden was written. Towards the end of the video, Ejae gets overwhelmed with emotion, and we see just how much the process of writing this song meant to her personally and how it reflected her own struggles. It's an important reminder that no matter how trivial or superficial a song may seem, there are always human feelings behind it, even if it's a "commercial" song. It's the emotional content that ultimately reaches and connects with audiences:
For a more detailed exploration of Ejae's backstory and journey to redemption, you can check this out:
It's also a damn good song on its own merits - the melody, lyrics, music, production, etc. are all top-notch - even Rick Beato was impressed during one of his Spotify top 10 rundowns. And while it's clearly packaged as K-Pop, it's actually not a full on K-Pop style song. It's more of a hybrid that straddles K-Pop and modern show tune styles, which makes sense, considering its role in an animated film that's very Disney-adjacent, and the film's music director having a Broadway background.
The song's primary writers, responsible for the topline and lyrics, are Ejae and Mark Sonnenblick. Soon after the movie and song were released, Ejae's backstory emerged and became an integral part of the song's lore.
Her childhood and teen years were devoted to rigorous training within Korea's highly structured K-Pop artist development system. But after years of hard work, she never got signed to a K-Pop act and eventually aged out of the system (before she was 20
) and was essentially kicked to the curb. Having no other skills beyond her K-Pop performer training, the future seemed bleak.Ultimately, she decided to teach herself how to use a DAW and started writing songs, one of which, became a minor Korean hit for a K-Pop act. She moved to New York to further her music studies and make connections, and was still struggling when she got the call to be on the writing team for the K-Pop Demon Hunters movie.
Not only was she a key writer, but the film's producers ultimately wanted her to sing all the female-led songs in the movie, which was amazing, considering one of the main reasons for her rejection by the K-Pop system in Korea, was because they felt her voice was too "husky" and "dark".
The rest is history. It's a great redemption story, and an encouraging example of the old proverb, "When a door closes, another opens."
In this video, Ejae and Sonnenblick discuss in detail how Golden was written. Towards the end of the video, Ejae gets overwhelmed with emotion, and we see just how much the process of writing this song meant to her personally and how it reflected her own struggles. It's an important reminder that no matter how trivial or superficial a song may seem, there are always human feelings behind it, even if it's a "commercial" song. It's the emotional content that ultimately reaches and connects with audiences:
For a more detailed exploration of Ejae's backstory and journey to redemption, you can check this out:
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