In the wake of “KPop Demon Hunters” hit song “Golden” making history as the No. 1 song on the latest Billboard Hot 100 Charts, it marks another milestone for what’s becoming one of the biggest songs from an animated movie in recent memory. Not only is it the first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 song in an animated film since “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from “Encanto” in 2021, but it is starting to approach the kind of worldwide mania that “Let It Go” from “Frozen” hit back in 2013.
It would seem that “Golden,” “Let It Go,” and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” are arguably the big Trinity of animated song crossover hits in the last decade-plus. While they obviously have differences, they also have similarities – and perhaps similar levels of being misleading – that are downright eerie. But whether that will extend into Oscar season when it comes to “Golden” and “KPop Demon Hunters” is another issue altogether.
“Golden” has now joined “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” as a Billboard No. 1 song, a feat that even “Let It Go” couldn’t achieve despite its immense power. Yet “Golden” and “Let It Go” are far more thematically compatible together, although “KPop Demon Hunters” is only a surprise hit on Netflix, and “Frozen” was a billion-dollar box office blockbuster for Disney. But many have already seen similarities between “Frozen” fairy tale queen Elsa and “KPop Demon Hunters” K-Pop queen Rumi, right down to their now iconic anthems – and how these songs really aren’t as truthful and freeing for them as they sound like.
“Let It Go” is celebrated for Elsa finally embracing her ice powers, renouncing her fear of them, and being herself for the first time since childhood. And yet in all honesty, for all its empowering messages, it is not a song that sets Elsa free as much as she, and as much as the audience, thinks it does. For that matter, it literally ends with her closing the doors on her new ice palace and shutting out the outside world, exactly as she did in her regular palace for years. If anything, it is a song of false hope for Elsa in the long run, as the only things – and the only person – that can completely set her free and out in the open don’t reach her until much later.
“Golden” works in almost the exact same way for Rumi, although it too is celebrated for her and fellow hunters/song partners/best friends Mira and Zoey singing about “who we’re born to be.” But for Rumi, just like Elsa, she sings that message as a mere shortcut to actually living it – since she means the song to be the final key that will erase her half-demon side and her hidden patterns forever. Like Elsa, when Rumi sings her anthem of false hope halfway through the movie, harsher reality wrecks it a short time later. And like with Elsa, Rumi has to see her powerful yet half-measure of an anthem come crashing down before she finally, fully, and truly accepts her authentic self, embraces it proudly for the world and herself, and shows “What It Sounds Like.”
There is something ironic, if not odd, about how audiences are so inspired by songs like “Let It Go” and “Golden” that sing of personal growth and self-acceptance, but only take the characters who sing them halfway there at most. At least with Rumi, she gets another song that brings her the rest of the way and saves the world in the process. Yet “What It Sounds Like” isn’t quite the No. 1 hit “Golden” is anyway, although it and several other “KPop Demon Hunters” songs are still in the top 35 on Billboard.
If one wants to stretch it further, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is another mega animated song that is kind of a lie at the center, too. “Encanto’s” hit number advertises how the mysterious Bruno ruins everything with visions of the future, but of course, this exaggerated vision of him as a fearful figure to be cast out is as false as any prophecy. It is also meant to be more comical and catchy than heartfelt and personal, especially since Bruno isn’t a main character like Elsa and Rumi. Nonetheless, it is another song where everyone sings along to lyrics that aren’t entirely on the level, and are sung by characters lying to themselves through these lyrics more than anything else.
In the moment these songs are played, it is easier to miss the intentional and perhaps unintentional nuances, red herrings, dramatic ironies, and layers that reveal themselves during the rest of these movies. It is especially easy when it comes to a song written by early 2020s era Lin-Manuel Miranda, another sung by Idina Menzel, and another that brings more than just K-pop fans together. They all sell a seductive and powerful message in their own way — even if it is one that seduces the characters who sing them more than it probably should, considering the lessons they’re still not ready to embrace at the time fully.
Although “Let It Go” let Elsa love herself without accepting what would really thaw her heart yet, audiences accepted it all without question – and ultimately, so did Oscar voters when “Let It Go” won the Best Original Song Oscar in 2013. On the other end, although “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” topped the charts in late 2021, it never got a chance to top the Oscar charts since “Encanto” could only fit the more mournful song “Dos Oruguitas” in for a nomination, where it lost to Billie Eilish’s “No Time to Die.”
Now, as “Golden” tops the charts and “KPop Demon Hunters” continues to top Netflix searches, it is increasingly easy to wonder if “Golden” will go the way of “Let It Go” at the 2025 Oscars, or not even reach the stage just like “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” For all of its breakout success and soundtrack records, “KPop Demon Hunters” is a Netflix movie that never went to theaters this summer and needed to be a word-of-mouth sensation to get this far, unlike with Disney blockbusters such as “Frozen” and “Encanto.”
Netflix probably isn’t kicking itself for letting hundreds of millions in summer box office slip through, even though “Zootopia 2” will likely be the only animated theatrical film to reach $100+ million in all of 2025. Sony Pictures Animation might have more regrets, especially since it had “Smurfs” go to theaters this summer instead and got almost nothing out of it. But now that “KPop Demon Hunters” and songs like “Golden” are big enough to start showing on Oscar season radars anyway, especially now that its first screeners to voters are heading out this week, Netflix and Sony have to wonder how far they can really take this in the months ahead.
There might be a lengthy hunt ahead, especially since “Wicked: For Good” was assumed to have a stranglehold on this category long ago with its new original songs. Given that they come from Part Two of a Best Picture nominee, a movie with the potential to make hundreds of millions in theaters, and may be performed by Ariana Grande and/or Cynthia Erivo on Oscar night, it was hard not to see the category as a foregone conclusion.
The songs from “Frozen” and “Encanto” also benefited from their movies winning Best Animated Feature, which is another uphill battle for “KPop Demon Hunters” in itself. While the Best Animated Feature category has gone fully international these last few years with wins for “The Boy and the Heron” and “Flow,” those movies were small-scale underdogs beating big studio nominees. If anything, now “KPop Demon Hunters” might be too big at this stage to play that card, especially with Netflix’s backing.
As similar as “Golden,” “Let It Go,” and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” may be in certain thematic areas, storytelling themes, misleading emotional milestones, and crossover success, they all took very different paths to get there – “Golden” and “KPop Demon Hunters” more than the others. Will they continue to be rewarded for their divergent paths all the way to Oscar night, or will their Billboard milestone be enough for now – at least until Netflix and Sony Animation likely spend the rest of the decade trying to top “Golden” with sequels and new anthems themselves?
Do you think “KPop Demon Hunters” will be nominated for Best Animated Feature? What about “Golden” for Best Original Song? Have you seen the film yet? If so, what do you think of it? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account and check out the team’s latest Oscar predictions here.
