Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami deliver their first live performance of the KPop Demon Hunters number 1 hit “Golden”

KPop Demon Hunters has been taking the world by absolute storm. And as if the film breaking Netflix records isn’t enough, one of the songs from the soundtrack is tearing up the charts. KPop Demon Hunters’ ‘I want’ song “Golden” has charted in over 70 countries. And in approximately 20 of those countries, the song hit number 1.

But despite the mammoth success of KPop Demon Hunters since its release in June and its song “Golden” sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 for 6 weeks, only a few days ago did we get a televised live performance of the song from the three women who provide the singing voices for Huntr/x — Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami.

I’m happy for “Golden”. But my Huntr/x song of choice is “What It Sounds Like”.

Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami getting the opportunity to perform “Golden” live is such a huge deal. We so rarely see songs from animated films blow up to such a point that we get a televised performance of them. The only recent instance I can think of where this happened was with Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” — which also hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. And at a time when AI is a topic of discussion and virtual music acts such as Hatsune Miku and them bitches from Splatoon have long been a thing, I’m almost certain some exec asked the question of ‘Can we not just have holograms of Huntr/x perform the songs instead?’.

Rei Ami, Ejae and Audrey Nuna on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon | NBCUniversal

The singing voices for Huntr/x getting the chance to perform “Golden” live is also an amazing moment for Ejae, who provides the singing voice for Rumi. Ejae was a trainee at SM Entertainment for 10 years, but did not debut. Ejae managed to create a career path for herself as a songwriter — penning songs for SM acts such as Red Velvet and Aespa, and also Le Sserafim and Twice. And now she has her huge breakthrough moment as a performer on a song that she co-wrote, which is a global hit and features on one of the year’s biggest films. Although I really could have done without Dr. Puke getting coin off the back of “Golden”’s success. Yep. Plot twist. Ejae is signed to Prescription Songs, which is a music publishing and licensing company founded by Dr. Puke. [Wretches]

It feels like musicals and films and TV shows centred on music are having a bit of a moment. Over the course of the past year we’ve had Wicked, KPop Demon Hunters and Glass Heart all blow up and have their songs go viral. And me, being somebody who listens to English, Korean and Japanese music — I love to see it.