Over the past few weeks, I’ve been asked at least a dozen times whether I’m going to review the songs from the popular Netflix movie K-Pop Demon Hunters. The answer is still “no,” though with this post I guess it’s kind of a semi-“yes.”
I want to apologize to anyone who received an increasingly dismissive response from me when asking this question. Don’t take it personally and it wasn’t my intent to be rude. It’s just that it’s come up so often that it’s become a running gag in the comments section. Now, there’s a full post to contain all the discourse!
Anyways, as I posted on Twitter/X last week, I’m not a fan of these songs overall. What’s amazing to me is how many people on social media took that as a great offense, defending this project with the same fervor they’d commit to a flesh-and-blood idol group. I guess I’m glad the project has hit such a nerve, even if the music isn’t for me.
The thing is, the songs are… fine. They’re very generic and built upon relatively sturdy K-pop tropes. There are just some big stumbling blocks I can’t get past. First, I’m not a huge animation fan to begin with — especially this newer CGI style that simply reminds me of characters in an advertisement for bath tissue. So, I haven’t watched the movie and am likely missing a lot of important context. Second, I dislike when big tent projects like this smooth over any intricacies of an art form (and at its best, K-pop is art!) to create the most palatable product possible. Whatever the initial intentions were behind these songs, that sanitized quality is what I hear first and foremost.
Of the popular songs on the soundtrack, I suppose Soda Pop is my favorite. But as the internet’s resident lover of bright boy group concepts, I’ve heard hundreds of songs in this soundscape and Soda Pop doesn’t do anything fun or interesting enough to stand out. It sounds like a survival show competition track.
Meanwhile, I get that fans are liking Golden because it sounds a bit like IVE’s best hits, but to me the execution and faux self-empowerment message feel more in line with Rachel Platten’s Fight Song — a track I have a serious distaste for. I just can’t get past this. I find it actively annoying.
Then there’s Your Idol, which is just too cringe for me to enjoy. If an actual idol group had performed it, I might be able to look past the lyrics but it just feels like the most obvious K-pop pastiche in an eye-rolling way.
So… yeah. In some ways I should be the target audience for this whole project but the music has fallen flat for me and I don’t really see why it’s become so popular (beyond the obvious reach of Netflix).
