At the 98th Academy Awards, held on 15th March 2026 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, "Golden" by the fictional group Huntrix claimed the Oscar for Best Original Song — the first K-pop track ever to do so. The song's chorus began life as a melody its composer, Jae Lee, hummed to herself on the way to a dental appointment.
A chorus born in the back of a car
"Golden" was released on 4th July 2025, as the second single from the soundtrack to *K-Pop Demon Hunters*, a Netflix animated film that had premiered on 20th June. The track runs three minutes and fourteen seconds. Within the film, the singing voices of Huntrix's three members are performed by Jae Lee, Audrey Nuna and Rae Amie. Seven songwriters share the credits: Jae Lee, Mark Sonnenblick, Kwak Jungkyu, Lee Yuhan and Nam Heedong of Idio, producer 24 (Seo Junghoon) and Teddy. Production credits went to 24, Idio, Teddy and Ian Eisendrath.
At a press conference in Seoul last October — her first visit to South Korea — Jae Lee recalled receiving a backing track from The Black Label (a Seoul-based music production company) and improvising the chorus melody while listening to it on the way to the dentist. In a separate interview with an international music publication, she added a more colourful detail: the appointment was to fit a gold crown, the consequence of eating too many sweets — and that, she said, is where the song's title came from. The chorus came quickly, but refining the full track took a month or two of painstaking adjustments, with multiple rounds of back-and-forth with the film's director to ensure the song served its narrative purpose. The working title was "Gold".
Deliberately difficult
Two conditions were set by the scene. The lyrics had to include the word "gold", and the protagonist Rumi had to hit an exceptionally high note. Jae Lee, a naturally low-voiced singer, found this challenging — the song's peak reaches A5. "Everything that makes 'Golden' so difficult to sing was done on purpose," she said, adding that blending Broadway composer Mark Sonnenblick's musical-theatre sensibility with her own K-pop instincts was central to the process. The songwriting team is said to have approached the track as though writing a biography of a single person in the form of a pop song.
The result contains a good deal of autobiography. Jae Lee spent twelve years — from her teens into her twenties — as a trainee at various entertainment companies in South Korea without ever making her debut as a performer. At the October press conference, she said "Golden" was a song she herself had needed during those years, and that she had wept while recording the demo. At the time, she confided, she had come close to giving up songwriting altogether.
From number 81 to number one: the chart record
"Golden" entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 81 in early July 2025. On the chart dated 11th August (US time), it displaced Alex Warren's "Ordinary" to reach the top spot. That week it logged 31.7m streams and 8.4m radio audience points. Billboard noted it was the first number-one song on the Hot 100 performed by a female-led K-pop act. It was the ninth Hot 100 chart-topper connected to K-pop, following six tracks by BTS and solo efforts by Jimin and Jungkook. By the chart dated 15th September it had spent four consecutive weeks and five total weeks at number one; by the time of the Oscar ceremony in March, its tally stood at eight weeks atop the Hot 100.
In the United Kingdom, "Golden" spent ten weeks at the top of the Official Singles Chart — only the second K-pop song to reach number one there, after Psy's "Gangnam Style". It also topped South Korea's Circle Digital Chart.
From the Grammys to the Oscars
The awards followed in quick succession. The Golden Globe and Critics' Choice awards for Best Original Song both arrived in January. On 1st February, at the pre-ceremony for the 68th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, the song won Best Song Written for Visual Media — the first time a K-pop track had ever won a Grammy. The recipients were Jae Lee, Teddy, 24 and Idio. In his acceptance speech, 24 dedicated the award to Teddy, whom he called "the pioneer of K-pop" and described as both his greatest mentor and closest friend, noting with evident regret that Teddy had been unable to attend.
At the Oscars, "Golden" competed against "Dear Me", "I Lied to You", "Sweet Dreams of Joy" and "Train Dreams". Jae Lee, Audrey Nuna and Rae Amie performed the song live on stage during the ceremony. In a tearful acceptance speech, Jae Lee recalled being mocked as a child for loving K-pop and said it moved her that everyone was now singing this song. A procedural quirk also drew attention: Academy rules cap the number of trophies awarded in this category at four, meaning the seven credited songwriters had to agree among themselves how to divide them. A moment that went viral was the speech by Lee Yuhan, one of the co-writers, being cut off mid-sentence as the orchestra played the broadcast off the air.
Aftermath
At a press conference held on 1st April at CGV Yongsan iPark Mall in Seoul, Jae Lee reflected on the Oscar night. "I never imagined Leonardo DiCaprio would be holding a light stick," she said, referring to the glow sticks ubiquitous among K-pop fan audiences. Director Chris Appelhans, speaking at the same event, confirmed that a second season is in development, with Korean culture as its foundation.
In brief
"Golden" began as a melody improvised on the way to a dental appointment and ended up winning K-pop's first Grammy and first Oscar. The deliberate difficulty built into the song produced the biggest records of all.