Classical Musicians & Producer Review: KPop Demon Hunters | ReacttotheK Weekly Podcast Ep.75
Added 2025-07-12 04:34:22 +0000 UTCThere are two groups dominating the charts right now and they're... fictional groups? From a movie?? Sony Pictures Animation's "KPop Demon Hunters" may just be the biggest Kpop-related event of the year as the film exploded in popularity after it dropped on Netflix, quickly becoming the most-watched movie on the platform. The soundtrack has also found a life of its own, becoming one of the highest charting movie soundtracks of the decade and apparently peaking higher than powerhouses like BTS and BLACKPINK on the US Spotify chart. With so much hype surrounding the film, we knew we had to check it out for ourselves and see how well the soundtrack holds up for us as both musicians and longtime KPop fans. Hope you have your popcorn ready, because we ended up doubling the actual runtime of the movie with our yapping 😅
Comments
My favorite cover is the finger style guitar version of Golden by J. Sankim.
Deschampsia
2025-07-12 22:09:51 +0000 UTCMy first watch I just thought it was cute and not a waste of time. I scrambled mid-watch to check the song credits and find Teddy Park wrote the big Huntrix songs that sounded so Black Pink. I only pulled the Twice version of Takedown for my playlist. Then I watched it again, with company, and I realized it is a musical. The ways the songs seem thin, compared to commercial k-pop, are exactly what make them easy to sing and carry the story along. I suspect the chart topping is more the musical quality than the k-pop quality. Though Soda Pop and Golden made my lists, now; I can’t stop singing along.
Deschampsia
2025-07-12 21:58:53 +0000 UTCSO glad you did an episode on this! This soundtrack is really solid overall, but I have to say that How It's Done did not make my playlist, and the discussion on how much it's 'girl crush' with all the call-outs to girl groups I listen to all the time makes me think that maybe I've just heard this kind of song so many times and have those songs playlisted so many times that I just didn't want another. The songs that made my playlist(s): Golden, Soda Pop, Your Idol, and What It Sounds Like. Golden is so vocally amazing that it sticks in my head instantly. In accordance with Umu on the fact that I'm not even going to try belting that high, it's an absurd set of notes to hit and she slays it to the ground. Also, Ive's I Am is one of my all-time favorite K-pop songs so it all makes sense lol. Soda Pop is like the best of all the boy group debut songs when their debut concept is bubblegum/love us because we're so cute and happy, and I LOVE IT. It's so fun and bouncy and singable! It makes me feel so happy even though it's sung by demons... ;) Your Idol is everything I love about Ateez and Stray Kids and every DrAmA song that I've ever loved. A big, bombastic, drama song will almost always hit with me, and YES COLTON that moment coming out of the bridge with that fun 3/4 bar is FIRE. It absolutely makes the song and would add a whole extra star all by itself if I were rating it. What It Sounds Like is such a classic soundtrack journey of a hero song, I couldn't even put it on my K-pop playlist, I actually put it on my Soundtrack playlist with songs like Show Yourself from Frozen 2 and Speechless from Aladdin (live action), and I am of the opinion that it fits with those kinds of songs perfectly. The choir in this song is everything for me. The one and only gripe I have is that at the very end when there's that repeating line (lines?), just prior to the big ritardando, it felt very unnecessary musically and like it was only there for the sake of what was happening in the movie, so it irritates me a bit, but the entire rest of the song is so good that it still playlists.
Lydia Hartzler
2025-07-12 17:21:49 +0000 UTC
