KPop Demon Hunters: This week, seven of the Top 10 songs on Spotify in America are from this movie, which has now been out for two months. It’s also Netflix’s most-watched original film, with 236 million views since its June 20 release. “Golden” is the true standout single, having been #1 almost the entire time and so far reaching #11 on Top 40. It is also No.1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 this week. It is truly one of 2025’s five biggest songs… but with what demographic?
K-Pop fans are a very dedicated, loyal and passionate group of people who make up a small piece of the pie. I can honestly say with total truth and no bias, that we have never had a single request for any KPop Dem, on Hunters song from or on behalf of a person over the age of 13. As for the Spotify streams? Those can be credited to kids listening to it over and over again, parents playing it for them, and the Kpop loyalists/fan clubs who work hard to make the song big. It’s the same group of people who call, text, message and post to another Top 40 syndicated show that claims it’s the “number one request from millions of people.”
We’ve had adults call for the song before. Then we ask, “is that what you wanna hear, or is this for your kid?” or “okay, now what do YOU wanna hear?” and of course they pick a different song. We are family friendly but not made for children. This type of candy music is a major adult tuneout and detrimental to ratings and overall Hit Radio format image.
Justin Bieber – “YUKON”: An expected second single from “SWAG” could be here, as “YUKON” sits in the Spotify Top 50 for a month straight. “DAISIES” is still comfortably in the Top 10, but it wasn’t clear from the getgo which tracks, if any, would become radio hits. Those are the only two tracks by Justin Bieber currently in the Top 200. Right now, “YUKON” is #43 on Top 40 with KMVQ (67x) and KYLD (80x) in San Francisco as its top supporters. KBFF/Portland played it 57 times this week. So far, only three total requests for it on Liveline. Definitely a song to watch though.
Buried Treasures of the Week
Paramore – “Decode”: Another rock throwback with request resurgence on Liveline. In the past three months, we’ve gotten some great calls and stories from people wanting to hear this. It was released in 2008 as part of the Twilight soundtrack, one of the biggest movie series of all time. It was the follow up to Paramore’s “Misery Business”, another classic that still gets lots of requests to this day. It’s completely outside the realm of what Top 40 sounds like now, but that’s because the format has narrowed and now plays very little alternative/rock despite a very clear demand for its old and new songs showing up reliably on streaming (and requests). “back to friends” by sombr has been Top 10 on Spotify for four months, a Top 5 request on Liveline for two months and is widely out-performing the radio hit “undressed” everywhere else. Just this week it finally entered the Pop radio Top 30. What does the format (with most stations now targeting 25-54 year olds) have against Alternative music?
“Decode” was a marginal hit upon release, peaking at #5 on Alternative radio, #36 on Top 40 and #33 on the Billboard Hot 100. Today, it is their fifth most-popular song on Spotify, with 400 million streams. Above it “Still Into You” (#1 with 1.02 billion streams), “Misery Business”, “The Only Exception” and “Hard Times”. Looking back at old request lists for John Garabedian’s Open House Party (which at the time was tabulating 2000+ calls on a Saturday night), it was also a Top 10 request and peaked at #8.
Jesse McCartney – “Beautiful Soul”: In a very alternative and rhythmic era for music, 17 year old McCartney debuted with his solo single after being in the boyband Dream Street from 1999-2002. It became an instant hit with its catchy, cute pop melodies and romantic lyrics. It was just what the format needed. We played it on “Who Sings It?” about a month ago and since then have received half a dozen requests for it. It’s common for a nearly-forgotten song to get even more requests after playing it once or twice from a request or on a contest. We see that more with “Ice Ice Baby” and “Baby Got Back” than anything else. It goes away for a month, then one person asks for it again and suddenly every night after that for two weeks people are asking for it.
“This type of candy music is a major adult tune out and detrimental to ratings and overall Hit Radio format image”. An interesting comment considering your mentor.
CHR or Top 40 is the place for pop music and pop culture. I’m not a big fan of KPop either, but ignoring this song seems the opposite of what a Top 40 should play. I wouldn’t play it a 100 times a week. I’m not sure I’d play it 50 times a week. Play it strategically while the moment is here and move on. Just my 2 cents. Enjoy your column!
The ultimate goal is to appeal to 18-34 year olds, not 13 year olds. John would never play a song like this, unless he saw adults actually asking for it. He almost never played Justin Bieber until his voice changed in 2012 because he was a kid’s artist that adults couldn’t stand. Now, all of those people are 15 years old and “Baby” is our most requested throwback of all time with our target audience.
Wow, Mason, I didn’t know that you hated KPop (and, ultimately, Korean people) that much. Just remember, Mason, the potential 13-year-old listener who loves KPop today is tomorrow’s 18-34, and the next decade’s 25-54. And, that 13-year-old that you just refused to play their favorite song for may not only tune out from your show, but may tune out from radio altogether, deciding that, well, that Mason jerk didn’t want to play my song, and radio overall isn’t playing my favorite music, so why should I listen to radio at all if they don’t care what I wanna hear. Is it worth killing off the radio audience tomorrow so you can please today’s adults? Are you comfortable in so much of your hatred of “candy music” as you call it that you wish to endanger radio listenership further? If so, good for you, but, frankly, while your opinions may benefit targeting 18-34-year-olds now, your attitudes and biases are toxic to the industry as a whole, and to it’s future. Radio as an industry needs to engage tomorrow’s listeners, and those are today’s 13-year-olds, in order to sustain it’s viability. And, yes, Mason, that may just mean… gasp! playing something from K-Pop Demon Hunters to please them. Alienate that 13-year-old now, and they may stick with streaming forever. Alienate a bunch of 13-year-olds who love KPop now, and they may decide that radio doesn’t care about them, and they will not give radio their listenership at all in the future.
Thanks for your comment, genuinely. Saying I hate Korean music and their people is just absurd. I was not making a comment about KPOP itself, but instead, the actual KPOP Demon Hunters soundtrack which is literally a kids movie. Let It Go by Idina Menzel was one of the biggest movie soundtrack songs of all time. Every kid loved that song. If that song came out today and was #1 on Spotify, I’d be saying the same thing. The country of origin and their nationality has nothing do with it. So please don’t make such a ridiculous comment.
Also, the “13 year olds who will be tomorrow’s 18-34 audience” are not gonna want to hear those kiddie songs in 10 years. The same way you played with transformers and barbie dolls as a kid. People grow up and their music tastes change.
I agree that radio needs to retain its young audience to make them habitual listeners in the future, but the same way we try to hold onto the older 35-54 listeners by playing more Golds, you need to have limits. We don’t wanna appeal to 80 year olds and we also don’t wanna appeal to 10 year olds. Obviously, having a share of that whole audience is great and you can try to please everyone, but you’ll never please all the people all the time.
1) Top 40 was always a format that considered 12-24. Always, until it it wasn’t. The focus on 18-34 eventually drove a generation of teens away. 2) The author raves about how his show pays close attention to Spotify/streams but now says that the requests could all be from a small group of fans. I can agree but you can’t have it both ways…why select one song and have different rules? Pop music is top 40 so play it. We didn’t groom 12-24 to listen and that’s one very big reason (there are certainly more) radio is not the choice of the younger generation.
I’m merely dismayed that once again the most prominent Kpop release in some time is alarmingly subpar and generic. The closest we’ve gotten to a good, genuinely broadly liked Kpop smash of late is Fifty Fifty’s “Cupid” if I’m not mistaken. It definitely had quality on its side, but was not quite a smash and thus was only accepted at radio in a tentative way. The two big BTS ones were… fine? There seemed to be no purpose in these being in English beyond to signpost intention that **this is the crossover!!** with the lyrical content being completely interchangeable and forgettable. Then again from an artistic standpoint I preferred “Life Goes On,” the Hot 100 #1 “hit” that was off that chart in 3 weeks (and incidentally was not in English), so what do I know?
The best Kpop song I’ve heard on radio is Monsta X’s “One Day”: honest, convincing, specific, beautifully sung. (The opposite of how I’d describe “Golden”!) I heard it on radio once or twice at most; apparently it went #30 on the pop airplay chart. For all its nice qualities I suppose radio can only justify playing a tepid streamer so much, huh? NewJeans’ “Super Shy,” which streamed pretty well though not spectacularly, did even worse at radio, amazingly. Never heard that one on the air even though it is arguably one of *the* great Kpop tracks since the style’s rise to prominence in the States.
Ultimately radio treats Kpop as they treat other non-“pop” segments of the biz: to be acknowledged sparingly, exasperatingly belatedly, and only when the evidence that the “right” people like it is so overwhelming that its success cannot go unacknowledged. Accordingly, they will never treat a Kpop song as a “great song” worthy of their support before other metrics fall into alignment, whatever its creative merits. They will never see Kpop as core to the brand/format. They’ll just bebrudgingly play “the smash” from streaming whenever it happens to come along next, only to throw it directly into the non-recurrent bin when they’re done. “Glad that’s over!”
But honestly, yeah, I’m not going to enjoy hearing “Golden” on air. I’d prefer hearing “Baby Shark”.
Looks like this topic has hit a nerve.
Let’s keep in mind that this song is now not only Top 10 on CHR/Pop, but also Top 20 on Hot A/C radio.