Switched on Pop - The music theory behind K Pop Demon Hunters' chart dominance

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

It's time. Nate and Charlie break down the K Pop Demonhunters soundtrack to uncover the musical secrets behind its unprecedented success. From West Side Story to Gregorian chant, Phrygian modes to musical theater clichés, we 'll explain why you can't stop listening to the sounds of Huntr/x and Saja Boys. Songs Discussed Huntr/x - How It's Done, Golden, What it Sounds Like Saja Boys - Soda Pop, Your Idol Aldred Deller and the Deller Consort - Dies Irae West Side Story - Jet Song Aespa - Drama Riize - Get a Guitar Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Download the eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. All right, Charlie, every single day we have gotten an email, a DM, a passenger pigeon encoded message with the same entreaty. Please cover K-pop Demon Hunters.

The requests have been so incessant. I feel like people are trying to summon this episode into reality. So here we are. We had a very brief discussion of the soundtrack to the hit animated film a few months back. Yeah. With our guest, Elamene Abdelmaud from CBC's commotion, but it was not enough, Charlie. We need to dig deep into the phenomenon that is gripping multiple generations of listeners. and that is what I humbly offer you today is a musical exegesis of some of the key songs,

and maybe we'll understand why this music has such a grip on our collective psyche. I have to admit something, Nate, there's this moment in the film where one of the members of the K-pop group Huntrix see this new group, Saja Boy is coming about, and she's like, I swear it's just a fad. Their song, Soda Pop will be gone in just a week. And I really like demon hunters. But I just figured it was like another Netflix thing that would come and go on one week. And so I was like, uh, we're too late to it. But I feel like this trend has only gotten bigger.

I mean, their songs are all over the charts at the number one position. It's out of control. Yeah, this thing is breaking all kinds of records. It is the most streamed Netflix movie ever. It is the first soundtrack to have four songs in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Whoa. And it is the first time a K-pop girl group has gone to number one on the Billboard charts. So all kinds of firsts here.

And I think there's another reason why we need to come back to this soundtrack, which is that I don't think we were taking this seriously enough, okay? Maybe we had even a little bit of condescension, if I'm being totally honest. And after watching the film and sobbing through most of it, I was just moved, you know, and I was moved by the beauty of. but I realize that these songs don't really make complete sense on their own because they were crafted to be part of a narrative. Okay. So what do we need to listen to? Well, I think we have to start with our introduction to these characters.

The group, as you said, Charlie, is Huntricks. They are three massive K-pop stars in the world of this animated film, but they are also demon slayers. Yes. The title of this movie is very low. literal. And what the film's creative team said about this song is they wanted to establish, like, this is a group with some smashes. You know, this song needs to stand on its own as just a K-pop thing. What is the title of this? This is how it's done. It is how it's done.

Giving Black Pink. It's got that big 808. It's got the Phrygian scale, that half-step little thing, that thing, that Black Pink loves to do. It's got very dexterous rapping. And then you have to have a pre-chorus with very lush vocals. Yeah, it's the formula of a hit K-pop song. And I'll add one other core characteristic to the list you just gave us, Charlie. It's bilingual. Right from the very jump, we've got lyrics in both English and. and Korean. And that Frigian scale, you mentioned, where the home note moves up a half step and then back down, as opposed to a whole step, which is what you typically encounter

in a major or minor scale. Yeah, that gives the song a little bit of an edge, I think. You mentioned Black Pink as a possible referent here, a storied K-pop girl group. I found a song by another K-pop girl group, Espa, called Drum. that I feel captured some of the incendiary textures of this opening to K-pop demon hunters. There you go, that's how it's done.

This song needs to do something else too, which is give us a little bit more. bit of insight into the deeper characterizations of our protagonist. And what we're going to learn is that of the three members of Huntrix, there's the kind of tough bad girl, Mira, there's the cute one, Zoe, and there's our fearless leader, Rumi. She is harboring a secret. And at this point, Charlie, spoilers, if you haven't seen K-pop demon hunters, you know, Listen no further until you do. Rumi is actually part demon herself. And so this becomes her hero's journey over the course of the film, finding peace and reconciling these two sides of her identity.

So we even get a little hint of that narrative in her song section of this piece. She sings, hear that sound ringing in your mind. There's two things happening here. One, we're getting introduced to Rumi as this powerhouse vocalist. That's a big part of her story. But this idea of a song in your mind hints at the deeper power of these hits. They're not just fun songs to listen to. They have a deeper meaning.

Right. It's really kind of a battle of good and evil of life and death. Yeah. And the stakes are high. They literally say that music's job is to ignite our soul, to bring people together, and to vanquish the demons. You might not expect the other source of inspiration that the creative team used for this introductory song. When you're a jet, you're a jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day. When you're a jet, let them do what they can.

It is the Jets song from West Side Story. No way. I don't know if there's any musical overlap here, but I think that sense of solidarity, that sense of attitude, that you get from the Jets, from your first cigarette to your last dying day, that really permeates how it's done. And a song with just a lot of propulsion to introduce us to our characters, to get the show on the road. They didn't start with music.

They started with story. It was like, we have this epic tale, this demon-hunting narrative. How can we create songs that will bring that to life and express the characters? A really challenging thing to do when you're not just trying to create a catchy melody, but you're actually trying to push the story forward in these different ways.

Well, it's very K-pop as well. I mean, for every comeback that an idol group is going to have, they need to have an overarching narrative that pulls it all together. And so often the concept guides the songwriting. And that's why the film's directors, Maggie Kang and Chris Applehands, along with the executive music producer Ian Eisenrath, went to some seasoned K-pop veterans. The songwriter and vocalist E.J., who also,

is the singing voice of Rumi in the film, co-wrote a lot of these songs. Okay. And Teddy Park, who's kind of a huge figure behind the scenes in K-pop, who's worked with groups like Black Pink and Big Bang, he was responsible for bringing in a lot of the creative talent behind these songs. So they have like a pedigree.

And the track that Huntricks introduces in the film as their next big single, has kind of a double meaning. It's one of these K-pop smashes. It's called Golden. And it's about them being golden, but there's something else, Charlie. It's also about how they're going to heal the world and banish the demons through the power of song.

So let's press play on Golden and hear how they thread this needle. Wait, pause. Is it too much to say that that little ghastly synth feels like maybe the demonic voices and the pad that rises? is the music coming to take over and subvert the demons? Let's find out.

Now this is the most successful song from the soundtrack in the pop realm. And I think you can hear why. It builds in this really powerful way. It starts kind of low in the singer's registers. And you know that it's just going to get higher and higher as we move into the pre-chorus. All right, Charlie, there is something so cool happening here. Rumi sings, I lived two lives, tried to play both sides, but I couldn't find my own place. She is half demon, half human living two lives, okay.

And the music is kind of doing the same thing. Like the melody goes to this note A, but underneath we have a C major chord. So here's the C major chord. And here's the melody. It's almost like this melody. is living two lives because it doesn't really belong with that C major chord. Yeah.

And then the melody repeats, tried to play both sides, and the chord moves to a G. The melody stays the same. It's still not part of that G chord. There's still like attention there. Still outside of the expectations, which is appropriate because the next line

is called a problem child, because I got too wild. Is that still her singing or is that now, have we switched singers? That's Mira. Yeah, Mir's the problem child. But perhaps, in comparison, to what we heard in the earlier part of the verse,

the melody's just kind of hanging on these two notes. It's like it's feeling stuck. Yeah, it's trying to find its place, like the lyrics are saying. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, I don't think we're in the pre-chorus yet. I think this is the second half of the verse, or there's actually two pre-coruses in this song. Ah, okay, fair.

Because it builds and builds from here. Yeah, I mean, this song is so maximalist. It has two of everything. It has two choruses, two verses. Yes. So we're trying to find our right place, both lyrically and, and, you know, melodically, I guess. And we start to locate that place in the pre-chorus.

That's what we'll call this section. Okay. This is such an effective pre-chorus, because it's just literally getting higher and higher. The note values stretch out. Each of these syllables is a lot longer, kind of taking its time. Everything's opening up. They're apeggiating the chord out.

We've gone from trying to find our voice in this really, tight little melodic space of these two notes all of a sudden like I'm done hiding I'm now shining and the melody is literally doing the thing that they're singing and then the chorus and a little bit of exquisite text painting quite literal not only do they go up up up into the highest part of their ranges but over the course of the chorus it gets higher and higher so the second time they sing up up up with our voices they're actually going even higher than before yeah it's like the arc of the song has just been this slow build up and up and up and up to the highest point you can imagine. And what is so brilliant about this song is after this climactic high point, they go even higher.

It's such a fun moment. We literally have a callback to the pre-chorus that we heard before, where we have these arpeggiated, beautiful melodies. But they've changed because the underlying harmony has changed. So we're seeing progression and going up and being golden and breaking through role of, you know, expectations and so on and whatnot. And as you said, it also allows them to get to the highest note in the register, fulfilling the promise of being golden and going up, up, up. Yes, the pre-chorus has become the post-chorus. Yep. With new coloring. And what we thought was the highest note in the chorus, up, up, up with our voices, now goes even higher. Wow, A5, Charlie. That is up there. This is not an easy song to sing. When I was watching the movie, I,

immediately went over to the upright piano in my living room and I was like, oh, I got to learn how to play this. And I struggled because while the chords were simple, the melody was really sophisticated. And so I'm like, all right, I got to look up the sheet music. And then I'm getting really frustrated because the sheet music actually starts way down in the bottom of the treble clef in the like extended extra lines in a way that I can't even read. I'm like, why is it written down there? I hate this. I can't read it easily. And it's because the melody has to build and build and build and build and build. to that very high note, it traverses so much range that it was hard for me to read because I'm not very good at reading sheet music. But that's fine because it's literally, it's doing the thing that it's saying that it wants to do. It's like going out of demon world, into human world, vanquishing all the demons, being their best selves, getting everyone singing along. E.J., the writer in the voice of Rumi, said she challenged herself to create these huge ranges

for the songs and then immediately regretted it. when she realized she was actually going to have to sing all of these notes. There's one other cool thing that happens in this song. I mean, we just had a pre-chorus become a post-chorus. Now we're going to have a post-chorus become a bridge. That said, this whole thing is so thoughtfully composed. We've had this progression from the low range, up into the higher range, across four sort of distinct sections.

Yeah. And when we return back to the verse, of course, the expectation is that, we go back to something familiar, and yet not exactly. Wait it so long to break these walls down to wake up and feel like me. Put these patterns all in the past now and finally live like the girl they all see. This is a powerful moment and something that kind of elevates this song from just being a feel-good anthem into something a little deeper. Because here's this moment of introspection for, our protagonist, Roomy, when she says patterns, that's not like an abstract idea. That's like

the literal demonic patterns that criss-cross over her skin. And it gives the song a little tragic moment, frankly, that makes its pursuit of liberation even more potent. Yeah. So what we're hearing is a song that has a lot of embedded storytelling that feels like it's following a normal song form, but it's not really, because we've had, again, like, two verses that are different followed by pre-course and a chorus, then to return to the pre-chorus, and now kind of like this bridge verse, I feel like she's really earned this change, this shift into a bridge, because she's literally saying, waited so long to break these walls down. She's breaking down the walls of expectations of where the song is going to be going. And then to further defy those expectations,

when we return to what I think we were calling the pre-chorus, it's the same melody, but it's drop down an octave. Wait, really? I didn't even notice. As if these singers couldn't do anything else more kind of jaw-dropping. Yeah, now it's way down in the bottom of her vocal range. No more hiding. Now be shining like I'm born to be. Wow.

And like you noticed with the post-chorus, the chords are a little different here. Oh, that's interesting. Look, it's like E minor. So that's a new chord for us. Wow. So if I'm correct, the song goes from the D below middle C, which would be C3 up to A5. Huge range. That's like almost three octaves.

That's bananas. I feel like this song really earns its range because it is the hero song of the film. It is the big hit from the movie. It's the I Want song. It's the I Want song. It's also the song that I think really just. what I thought was an absurd premise. Like, wait, there's a K-pop band that is actually a bunch of demon hunters,

and it's through singing songs that they're going to unite the world and vanquish the demons. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. But actually, they really thread this needle effectively in the film. The idea of the demon is really all of the repressed shame and anguish that we feel. And when we repress those feelings, what they happen to do is jump out louder and come back as demons. And what our protagonist is dealing with is, should I repress those feelings deep down to the lowest part of my range? Or is there some kind of way of unifying the fact that I both have good qualities and imperfect qualities that can have some kind of meeting place, which is the ending

of the film, right? She unites these two worlds. And I feel like the extended range of this song takes us into the demon world. It takes us into the golden barrier that will protect us. from the demon realm and everything in between. It's a tall order for a three-minute pop song, and yet I feel like Golden pulls it off. But Charlie, you just hinted at the other side of this golden coin. It is the demon realm, and that realm has its own musical embodiment in the form of a K-pop boy band called Saja Boys. Let's hear what they sound like after the break.

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your period of the Pruva for one euro a month in Shopify.es bar records. Seeing the success of Huntrix, the demon realm led by the fiery presence, Guima, enlists Genu, a 400-year-old demon to start his own boy band called the Saja Boys, embodying many of the archetypes of the K-pop quintet. And they make their debut within the film Demon Hunters, with an incredibly catchy and infectious single called Soda Pop.

This is so well done. It is so innocent. Again, I think about how these songs were crafted with the idea of the narrative. And even this number, which is meant to be like soda, kind of empty pop calories, has a very specific point. It's meant to lull you in to the seemingly anodyne sounds of the Saja Boys, but underneath there's a darker reality. Which is that these demons are trying to recruit all the fans of Huntrix. And if they win over the hearts and minds of the fans, they will spread their evil into the universe and be able to take the souls of all the people. It's a fight for idle fandom, which is so much a part of the larger K-pop war. But now it has these higher stakes. There's so many cool musical touches here.

And I love the naked commercialism of it, too. It's like soda pop is such a great title because it's like both something kind of effervescent and fun and also something you can sell and shill as a group. And they incorporate the sound of. of a fizzing can of soda in this really satisfying way. But then there's also maybe a hint at the true intentions of this group. As the producers of the film said, I mean, the message of the song is kind of like, we're going to drink you up. Ooh, we're going to suck up your soul.

It's so innocent until you consider that these cute boy band members are literal demons. And then it starts to have a. different tone, I think. I love how self-aware this song is. And throughout the film, it's not afraid to use some of the cliches of K-pop. Like, this is a blatantly commercial song. There are plenty of blatantly commercial songs in all of K-pop that, like soda pop in the film, end up just being a huge hit because like soda, maybe it's not that good for us, but dang, it tastes sweet, tastes good, gives you that little buzz. There's a song by a K-pop boy band called Rise, get a guitar.

I feel like this captures some of that playful boyish energy that Saja Boys is trying to channel. You play me like a... That's fun. As with the Huntrix tracks, what makes Soda Pop so effective is the way it pushes the narrative forward and also stands on its own as a K-pop banger. The moment that really hammers this home is when we get... a rap break from the quote unquote baby of the group. Make me wanna flip the top.

I'm gonna come make you hit the spot. Every little drip to drop fizz and pop. That's what I'm toward that is getting hot. Just I'm sipping man, it's dripping out. It's done. I need a second round and pour a lot and don't you stop to my soda pot. Fizzles out. How far can we extend this metaphor of the soda pop?

How many sound effects of soda pouring can we pack into this thing? So it's like so perfect because the more excessive it is, the more convincing it is. Such a great exercise and command of pacing, where in the rap verse, the rhythm really paces itself out, right before you get back to that soda pop.

And they so know what they're doing. It's so thought out. Right. This is the moment, whether in the film or in an actual, you know, K-pop performance, where, you know, you highlight one member and kind of put them in the center of the frame and give this new texture to the soul. song. It's all very cinematic and theatrical.

The music is built for the visual. Now, I want to move to the dark side of Saja Boys, which is revealed in their next number, Your Idol. If Soda Pop had a little bit of menace kind of bubbling up under the surface, in your idol, it comes to the four. This is literally a song about stealing people's souls. It's like Mozart's Requiem. This track literally starts with this hellish choir intoning D.S. Ere, which is a Gregorian chant going back millennia about death.

This is a heavy beginning. We are not in the world of soda pop anymore. We are in the world of Hector Berliot's in the symphony fantastique. Some K-pop musician here. Definitely went to music school. We see you. And after this funereal intro, we get a song that has this kind of double meaning. It's about the literal demon sucking out people's souls. But like you mentioned, it might also be a commentary on the dark side of K-pop itself. The way that fandom can both be something celebratory and also something negative and divisive.

It's literally idol worship. you obsess, play me on repeat without me in your head. Any time it hurts, play another verse, I can be a sanctuary. Wow. Anytime it hurts, play another verse, I could be your sanctuary. Right. What is the dark side of idolatry? It is this slavish, cult-like devotion to somebody who doesn't really care about you at all,

except extracting your capital or your soul, I guess. As if your idol wasn't menacing enough, check out what key we're in, Charlie, E minor, which is the relative minor of G major, which is the key of golden. Yep, yep. So it is like the dark inverse of our big, ambitious golden hit. Here's the E minor demonic version. Kind of bold to have such a searing indictment of the dark sides of the K-pop industry in the middle of this pretty triumphant movie. I would say that this is performative critique. This is like where you include a little bit of the criticism of the thing that you're doing in order to maybe hold off the critics.

Because let's be honest. Like this thing is meant to be a commercial smash and it is. A truth borne out in the chorus. I love preaching. the choir as the Gregorian chant in the background is singing about death. And then can I get the mic a little higher? Whenever these songs verge on becoming too enmeshed in the world of demon hunters, they always pull back with some K-pop truism that makes the song feel really true.

That is something that you would encounter in a song out there in the wild. Can I get the mic a little higher? It's so perfectly done. As the masks fall away from the Saja boys, the song just gets darker and darker. When we get to the final chorus, the facade is gone. It's giving the weekend, you know, the sort of dark R&B pop. He even has a TV show called The Idol, doesn't he? But this idea of like, no one's coming to save you, this is all for not.

It's really dark. That line is very striking because I feel like up till that point, there's kind of, like a double entendre to each of the lyrics. Right. But by the end, it's just demonic. No one's coming to save you. There's no other way to interpret that. It's just like, the end is nigh.

Wow. So this song represents the narrative low point for our heroes when the world seems on the verge of being sucked into this demonic nether world through the infectious efforts of the Saja boys. But then it's the last stand of Huntricks. And as you said much earlier, Charlie, the climax of this movie and of this soundtrack, the apotheosis comes from accepting your flaws, confronting your shame. And for our protagonist Rumi, it is doing what she said in the song Golden and refusing to hide, being open about her demonic patterns. and in doing so actually collapsing the very binary that structured this whole film to this point.

Right. What are the demons? Charlie, they're all of us. And in embracing that fact, that becomes the true salvation. A salvation expressed in song through the final number, what it sounds like. Nothing but the truth now. Nothing but the proof of what I am The worst of what I came from

Patterns I'm ashamed of Things that even I don't understand And a different vocal style here A little less manicured, a little less processed A little more vulnerable and authentic It feels like it's reflecting Like so much of this film On the performance of authenticity

Something that is in constant tension in all of pop music, and especially in any kind of idol group that has been formed by a corporation, that these performers are expected to be performers, but they're also expected to be presenting themselves. And I feel like the film, I'm not a K-pop deep historian here, but my understanding is that a lot of what happens in each successive generation of K-pop groups is sort of pushing the boundaries of what is socially acceptable to say in pop music, right? that early K-pop you had to be a little bit more reserved about what you could say about yourself, your identity, your sexuality. And perhaps that is the sort of repressive, like, quality that the demons feed off of.

And that we make better music, it turns out, when we help all people who feel shame and negative emotions, when we help them realize that that's a part of them, that's okay. And we can express it through song. And great K-pop groups have, through generations, been able to push cultural back. boundaries, accept their inner demons, and push culture forward. This is what it sounds like. That's the demonic chorus again. So very cool moment here. We have our singers and Huntricks telling us, this is what it sounds like.

Me, without the lies, without hiding. And we just heard them sing, show me what's underneath I'll find your harmony. Then we get this breakdown. And like you said, we hear this. subterranean choir, which makes us think of your idol, which we just listened to. Yeah. But then, just like they said, find your harmony. Something happens harmonically that suggests hopefulness.

I got it. What's that? It's a musical. That, my friend, is the pre-chorus slash post-chorus of Golden. From Golden, transposed to our new key of E major for. the finale, what it sounds like. What a cool moment. It's mashed up with the sounds of the demons band, the Sajer Boys, your idol, the sounds of that mixed with the golden, the two things coming together. How lovely. And then the grand finale. Wait, what were they, what is the chorus singing

in the background here? Okay, we need our eagle-eared listeners to tell us what the chorus is singing in the final moments of this track underneath the main melody from Huntrix. There's this counter melody sung by the chorus, but I can't quite make out what they're saying, and I don't see it in the published sheet music or the lyric, so we need some amateur sleuths, forensic musicologists out there to get to the bottom of this.

But what we can't say is, like, this is the most fitting way to end this musical journey, right? This is what it sounds like. It's a commentary on the power of music itself, which in some ways is like the true subject of this piece. And I think that's why I found it so powerful as a film and why it made me appreciate these songs anew. It's like really a testament to music itself. I think that's so cool. Both the power of music to unite us and the power to divide us.

It's obviously a story about these idols and their fans and Good versus Evil, but it's really, I feel like the main character in this story is music. That's pretty cool. I felt like this film was produced like a pop song, which is it's not going to challenge you in some profound, unique way. It's not some crazy piece of art film. You're not listening to a Bjork. What you're getting is unbelievable excellence and attention to detail over every single. single microsecond that is so perfectly framed, constantly entertaining. And we're not going to use any news story forms, but we're going to completely open your heart around some of the most

mushy-gushy feelings and leave you feeling like, oh, dang, the power of music is enormous. And it does it through a meta-commentary on what it is to make a pop song. The film itself is structured like a pop song. It really won me over. I hope this was worth the weight. I appreciate the patience of all our listeners. I apologize. We did not dissect free and take down. Please hit us up on social media.

If you have thoughts about those songs, some insights we missed. And if you can figure out what the choir is saying at the end of what it sounds like, I desperately want to know. Otherwise, I mean, Charlie, there's no way they're not making a sequel to this. So I'll see you. You know, in a year or two to break down K-pop Demon Hunters, Volume 2. And honestly, I can't wait. And volume 3 and 4 and 5 and 6.

And we're going to see a world tour. This is a brand new giant franchise. It's going to, I think, fundamentally change the way that people are thinking about popular music in a moment when there's a lot of anxiety over whether or not we can create new hits and new artists. Because they've just done it. And it's been done with a bunch of animated characters. So what this pretends, I think we have a lot more. to talk about it on the show in the coming weeks about pop music in general, and I think that this is now a big part of it. I'm glad you brought that up, Charlie, because you know I had to go

research whether there's been a fictional animated group to have a Billboard charting song before. I kind of thought there was an... Alvin and the Chipmunks. Wow. Very impressive, Charles. You nailed it. Alvin and the Chipmunks. Switched on Pop is produced by Raina Cruz, edited by Lissa Soap, engineered by Brandon Farland, by Iris Gottlieb. Our theme music is by Jossi Adams, the exact scenario of Arc Iris, remember with the Vox Media Podcast Network, production of Vulture, which is part of New York Mag. You can subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back again. Next week, we're going to be

traversing the globe from the world of K-pop to the world of Sweden, where Swedish pop has had really an outsized influence on the charts, and we're going to take a look at how they've done it. We're talking with Zara Larson. It's going to be a lot of fun. And until then, Thanks for listening.