‘Golden’ Songwriters EJAE And Mark Sonnenblick On Golden Globe Nomination For ‘Kpop Demon Hunters’ Hit Song: “It Keeps Getting Crazier And Crazier”
The climactic song “Golden” from Netflix’s animated Kpop Demon Hunters keeps on shining.
The song has captured a Golden Globes nomination for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture, nominated alongside Miley Cyrus’ “Dream as One” in Avatar: Fire and Ash, “I Lied to You” from Sinners, both new songs from Wicked: For Good and “Train Dreams” from the film Train Dreams.
“It’s insane,” Kim Eun-jae who goes by EJAE said of the nomination. “It keeps getting crazier and crazier. Like, what? Very surreal.”
“It’s an honor too, for so many reasons, not only the fact that ‘Golden’ was nominated, and not only that it was nominated for Best Animated Feature, but also Cinematic Achievement too,” Sonnenblick added. “It was such a collaboration from so many different film artists and music artists on this project. To see it on a list with all of these movies that really had such a huge cultural impact this year — obviously the song means a lot to us but was another cool thing this morning.”
EJAE emphasized the film’s setting and connection to her culture.
I was so excited about this project. It’s my first film, and it’s about Korea, about my culture that me and Maggie [Kang] and, obviously Black Label, and for me, that’s what matters so much, is it’s like a little one hour and 30 minutes. People who haven’t been to Korea and want to know about Korea. Here you go. It’s a perfect way to represent and show the food, music, fan culture, friendship culture, everything about Korea,” she said. “I’m just so excited that the first animated film based in Korea, is getting this much love.”
EJAE also reflected on growing up in the states and the common experience of getting made fun of for the smell of kimchi in one’s lunchbox.
“We’d always get made fun of that, and people didn’t even know where Korea was. To have that and [now have] kids wanting to dress up as Korean girls for Halloween. Excuse me? That’s insane,” she said. “We used to have to dress up as typically, blonde hair, blue eyes, that’s what we wanted to be and wanted to look like. So to have other kids from all races wanting to be Korean is just, I’m so proud.”
Sonnenblick reflected on how animation complemented the song, which was the last one written for the film and one of the last sequences animated.
“Animation is so beautiful. From the beginning, when I came on, a lot of the design and storyboards were there, and from the beginning I was so moved and inspired by the team of artists, the designers — look at the credits at the end of the movie,” he said. “It’s such a collaboration and vision on their end. With ‘Golden’ specifically, I would have probably cried anyway, but the way that that was the last thing animated, or at least that sequence going into the movie is the last song that we wrote for it. The animation is telling you so much about the characters with song that can happen in live action too, but animation just lets you throw in all these things.”
“You can do more with animation,” EJAE added.
Kpop Demon Hunters is also nominated for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement as well as Best Animated Feature.
