EJAE - 'KPop Demon Hunters' [LIVE]

0:00When you want your spring break to feel like... And your kid's pool day to feel like... And your hotel bed to feel like... Ooh, and room service to feel like... Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like... Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton. For this day.

0:38Good evening, everyone. I'm Scott Feinberg, the executive editor of awards coverage at The Hollywood Reporter and a trustee professor at Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, from which I will say for our listeners, tonight's episode of THR's Awards Chatter Podcast is being recorded. Tonight, several hundred students and I are fortunate enough to be joined by a singer-songwriter who, just two nights ago, was at the Grammys. There, in recognition of the song Golden, that is featured in the Netflix film K-pop Demon Hunters, the most watched original title in the streamer's history with more than 500 million views, she won the Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media, the first Grammy ever awarded to K-pop or Korean popular music.

1:22It's just the latest in a long line of Golden-related accolades for this 34-year-old Korean-American. who also provides the singing voice in the film for the character Rumi, one-third of the girl group at its center, Huntrix. The earwormy tune shot to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for eight weeks, marking the first time a K-pop act not associated with BTS topped that chart, and making Huntrix the first girl group to top it since Destiny's Child with Bootylicious back in 2001. It went on to be recognized with a total of four Grammy nominations, including Song of the Year, making her the first Korean-American female songwriter ever nominated in the history of that category.

2:03It also won the Best Song Critics' Choice and Golden Globe Awards, and less than two weeks ago, it was nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar. In short, it was the song of the summer, and fall, and winter, and a true global phenomenon that has now racked up more than a billion streams on YouTube. Everyone knows about going up, up, up, but far fewer people know about the journey of ups and downs that led to it. Tonight, we'll get into all of it with our special guests. And so without further ado, would you please join me in welcoming to Chapman University and to the Hollywood Reporters Awards Chatter podcast, EJ.

2:54Gonna be, gonna be golden Oh, God, I did you Welcome. Thank you for being here. We're so excited to have you. Oh, my God. Woo! Thank you for having me. Hello. Wow. Well, tonight we are going to obviously go in depth about Golden, but first I think people would like to learn more about you. So can you share where you were born and raised and what your folks did for a living? Oh, yeah. It's a complicated one. I lived half my life in Korea and half my life in the States. I was born in Seoul, Korea, because my mom was on vacation. So when I was six months, which was a legal age to travel back on plane, came back to New Jersey, which was where I lived and then stayed there till I was eight.

3:45Oh, sorry. Came back to Korea, right? And then stayed there till high school, graduated, went to NYU, stayed in New York. back to korea try to debut as a k-pop idol that didn't work well we're gonna stop yeah so that's basically half and half i would say sure all right before we get into the k-pop idol uh side of the story part of that let me ask you this first of all what was your name at birth oh and jay kim yes so when did when and how did ej come about when was that a childhood nickname or no it was actually kind of uh it was interesting because you know i would introduce my name and people couldn't really pronounce it so i just went by ej yeah yeah it's kind of like that yeah what kind of music were you listening to as a kid were you was it kind of a mix of both cultures or were you leaning towards one oh definitely mixture of both cultures you know because i you know half my life in korea half my life in the states i um i think my first love was definitely k-pop that's when i kind of figured out oh i want to be a singer yeah i loved like the first generation like h.o.t g.o.d you know is that first generation yeah i think so right it was before k-pop was called k-pop yeah i was gonna ask i mean for people who need a little context a little history what do you remember like what was that in your memory that it kind of blew up um when k-pop blew up yeah absolutely uh i think it was blew up around it's a great question i think probably like it was like starting to kind of get into the states with like psy coming in with gangnam style i think a lot of people became pretty popular and then like bts obviously black paint kind of when it got really big too so yeah it was really interesting to see how it got into the mainstream world yeah were you somebody if we had you know if we tracked down classmates from grade school or whatever, would they remember you as a very musical kid?

5:49Or was that something that only came later? Oh, 100%. I think everyone at school knew I was essentially like the singer. My school is really small. I went to SFS, Seoul Foreign School in Korea. It's a very small school, and it was like a missionary-based school. And yeah, so we had like 100 kids in our class, very small. So I would do all the theater stuff or acapella groups. I would be the leader and figure out all the harmonies and stuff. And how early on would you say songwriting also entered the picture? Was it like, you know, most kids are probably covering the songs they love or whatever.

6:27Were you also writing stuff? Not at all. Not at all? No, because my goal was to be a K-pop idol. And K-pop idols didn't really write songs. So songwriting was really random for me, actually. I never thought I'd ever be a songwriter. That was never in my list. like my dreams were like makeup artist maybe literally like criminal lawyer I'm not kidding um and then singer that's it and then not songwriter interesting so you're I believe 11 in 2003 when what happens in your life that kind of shakes things up a bit yeah that's when when I got into SM entertainment before that was like you know auditioning a lot and SM was really nice enough to you know accept me.

7:13Would you mind just explaining for people who don't don't know about it like this is yeah kind of the place right? Yeah I would say Korea has like the top three at that time it was like top three record labels it was SM, JYP, and YG and they're like the biggest record labels of Korea and they would like produce huge k-pop idols and artists so at that time at least SM was like on the top of their game. My favorite k-pop idols were at SM as well. I don't know if you guys know, like Boa, like Dongbangshingi, which is TVXQ, a huge fan, SES, like HOT was from SM. So that was always my dream place to go.

7:55And what did it, being with them, it's like literally you get signed to be with them at 11. And what does that mean? Does that mean you leave school in your daily life? Or is it on top of, you know, a normal kid's life? How does that work? Well, it depends on the person like I know a lot of the trainees were casted in the States, so they would have to come to Korea. I don't know if they went to school Some kids did but they would have dorms for them. But for me, I lived in Korea as well So it was convenient for me that I would just go after school. However, because you know SM being a trainee is a job.

8:27So if they were like showcases or anything important I would have to skip school and so they would have to speak with you know my counselor at school or the president at school. Yeah, so I would skip school for that. And the goal of what, it's sort of my understanding, correct me obviously if I'm wrong, but it's sort of a star factory, a K-pop idol factory, and how many years do most people go there before it either happens or doesn't? Sorry, how many years? Well, so how long would somebody be in the being developed, which is kind of what they're doing, right? Yeah. Yeah, it really depends. Like some people, I mean, it is quite rare if like debuting within a year is really rare.

9:10Some people even like six months, but like usually the average would be around five years, like three to five years. And what happens then? You're either put into a group, they kind of put a group together or? They either put you in a group or they terminate the contract. It's kind of, you know, quite black and white like that. Yeah, that's kind of how the system was. And just like, you know, with what we would learn at these labels would be like a lot of rigorous training for like dancing, singing, Chinese, acting. It's like a whole program for everything to like essentially like train you to become this worldwide superstar, learn different languages.

9:52They actually also like checked our grades because we're Asian. They like made sure we didn't fail class. Well, other than that part, it sounds like what it used to be in Hollywood where you would be signed to a studio and they would try to build you up and then you either were kept around or not. And it's pretty harsh or great. And in your case, I guess, can you share, because it's a big part of your story now, I think, like what this came to a head how? How did it come to an end? Well, with SM, basically, what happened? Yeah, so I got in when I was 11, and I learned a lot of things. I trained really hard.

10:35I think around the time I went, it was a lot smaller. There were only 20 people, 20, 30 people. Now they have 80 people. It's quite big now. But back then, I was training with Girls' Generation, Super Junior, and that's who I was training with a lot most a lot but um you know they would right after we would have like a whole schedule for the week and like dance class and all that and usually it would end around like 3 to 4 p.m and I noticed like like a lot of those trainees would just like go home but I'm like you have this whole facility like let's practice and so I remember practicing a lot because I wanted to be the next boa essentially which is like essentially like aka Korean Beyonce say at that time and yeah so like I remember just training really hard as a kid and yeah I was like kind of like the first one there like at 8 a.m and then left at like 11 p.m like turning off all the lights I have so many ghost stories but anyway um yeah and like it was kind of interesting like even when I look back right now I'm like wow like she's a love that little girl really worked hard like I can't believe it even now her work ethic at that time was just beyond even my work ethic now in a way and so I think a lot of the feelings I got was um because you would have to do showcases and after the showcase they would like rank us and then that's kind of like our like test to see if we can go to the next stage of pre-debuting and I would always fail at that and always kind of be critiqued or rejected or you know quite how would like um i don't want to say it's not necessarily harsh but as a kid it's quite hard to hear like being critiqued and yeah and i just always felt like you know no matter how hard i worked just things never really worked out for me and i stayed there for a long time i felt very dejected and i think the process just kept going longer and longer so i stayed there for a long time what was the kind of feedback that you were getting at the time a lot about like you know my singing the way i sang my singing was a little too old sounding or like low or my dancing felt heavy you know they would also talk about like you know like physical appearance and stuff you know it's a business so i understand like you know so like it was it wasn't easy you know at one point i also realized for some reason as a kid i knew that k-pop idol wasn't forever so i wanted to have like a backup life and i noticed that trainees were not happy it wasn't that pretty as i expected it to be and so i really wanted to do music therapy can you break down with what that is oh music therapy is like i mean there's different ways to do it um but like you know basically using music or singing to help people get through any mental illness or depression or things like that to get help get through that essentially that's what music therapy was um I was like trying to get into it more but um I found songwriting so was there actually though the kind of thing where it's like the equivalent of a like a final exam or something where they're like you've passed or you failed or this isn't gonna work out with us or whatever or was it just kind of a sense that you wanted to focus it was time to focus on other things well i think why it kind of stretched was also like i wanted to have like a college degree that was very important to me uh to me and so i applied to nyu and i was supposed to actually debut at the time and it was like another girl a japanese girl chinese girl and we're supposed to be like this three member girl group like huntrix like yeah and it was like a ballad girl group but it never happened it was kind of like a it wasn't like uh like a like a what do you call it a final like official thing but it wasn't the official thing it was kind of like oh there's like an idea of that but it never happened and then after I graduated you know I came back and trained a little bit and then you know they basically put me again through the training again and uh they had a final meeting and I remember waiting for like a week to hear the result and i still remember it was at cafe benet in seoul korea if you guys know and in aapgujong in gangnam i went there and basically the result was they didn't think i was just to be plain and simple i wasn't a good singer a good enough singer i wasn't a good enough dancer like physically no just like kind of like i was way too old and i'm also too tall it's a good whole thing yeah that really does matter and so they it's just like the result was just like i don't think this makes sense business-wise i actually right now i completely understand to be honest how did you feel at that time uh it was really really sad like um there's like these theories that when you are about to die like you have like these memories just like flood floods you right yeah that's how i felt at that moment like like my dreams that i had or like all the hard work I did as a kid since 11 till like 22 it just felt like a waste and I was in the cab and it was raining that day and we're just like looking up and like you know how there's like raindrops on the glass and I was like it was like a teardrop on it I was like yeah it was like yeah it was like a movie scene but like yeah I was very numb and just very plain and simple just depressed and and that is you had already been accepted to NYU That was after I graduated.

16:12After you graduated. Okay, so how then did you begin doing something that you thought you weren't gonna do, which was songwriting? It was actually such a beautiful accident. I think what happened was afterwards I really got into like, during the time I was actually with SM, like at the end of it all, I really got into the underground scene in New York and LA. the SoundCloud scene it was really big back then so like Selection, K Trinata, like Mr. Carmack, you know Sango like that was huge and kind of self-production self-producing and home recordings were all really big back then so I started like studying that by myself and kind of me with my ex at that time were like kind of into the production so we would go to dubstep I don't know if you guys know in new york all right dub spot or dub stop dub spot yeah and then i would teach myself how to produce and then i think that's when my sound and sm also clashed and then after that i was just into making beats to be honest i did not know what i was doing but like i think i just went with my gut of what i whatever felt made me feel better and then um during that time like fast forward to when I was like 24 I met with these like this person like casted me to like start acting maybe and she was like you know in order to be a singer you should start focusing on like singing at um OST songs for K-dramas and I'm like okay and so I was singing a song that this producer wrote and during break time he was just kind of like what do you do like do you write and I was just kind of like I make beats and he heard one of my beats and he's like oh because at that time there was no like that soundcloud sound was not in korea so it was it fascinated him and he was like come to our studio like tomorrow and i came and i thought we were gonna make beats together but no he was like here here's a track make a melody like write a song over and i'm like um okay like okay like let's try you know he's like oh it's like a k-pop song so I have like this love-hate relationship with k-pop at that time right so I was just kind of like kind of like making not making fun I wouldn't say I was just trying to like figure out what k-pop sounded like to me and so I was like hello I don't know you like write about anything so I was like okay I'm gonna write about my breakup with my ex at that time so why not write about that yeah so I was like hello hello hello and then just wrote the song and it was the first song I've ever written literally at least by myself other than like class work that was the first song I've ever written and after I was done, it was so cathartic.

18:53It was such a weird feeling. That night, the same day, the producer called me and was like, by the way, your song's gonna get cut for Hani from EXID. Yeah, and she was quite a big artist at that time, and I did not know what that meant. But then, yeah, that meant, like, the song got through. It got picked for her single. And that's kind of when I was like, cool. You got the bug. Yeah, like, you can make money from writing about heartbreak. Cool. And so was there any kind of structured way of doing that in the way that, all right, when you wanted to be a singer, you go through SM. When you want to be a songwriter, if this guy's not calling you up to come over and make beats, how did you figure out how to actually get things from your head out into the world?

19:39That moment was so important to me because that was so interesting. I was being honest. I was writing about my issues in song form, and it felt so, it was music therapy for me. And that was like, whoa, this is so cool. And I think that's when I found passion for songwriting. And at that time, that song got cut, got released, and I met Andrew Choi, who's actually the singing voice of Juno. Yeah, and he wrote a lot of SM songs. And we met, I forgot what, some kind of meeting. and we have both have like sm kind of some like connection because of sm you know and so we i remember we talked for like five hours at a coffee shop just about sm and like about like our you know songwriting and singing and career and he kind of was just like he heard that song he was like do you want to write and that's when i was like 25 26 and we just started writing and it was honestly just like organic and how it happened and when he said that i was like yeah i want to write that's so cool like i'm making beats i never thought i'd be able to write but the fact that i was able to get a song cut i was like oh maybe i have something you know the imposter syndrome kind of like went away i kind of found my new passion i was like you know what if the singing's not gonna work out i like this and i also realized then when that you know what like i think everything happens for a reason i don't think k-pop idol life would fit with my personality i mean this might sound dark but like I don't know if I would be able to handle it genuinely if I went through that route I've lost you know friends from it so and I understand where they were coming from so yeah I think it was in a way saved me songwriting truly saved me in so many different ways and that's how the my career started and Andrew is the sweetest guy and he was my mentor And then he brought me into my first SM song camp when I was like 25, 26.

21:45And that's when I wrote Psycho, Red Velvet. Psycho.

21:49EJAE:Who the hell you think you are? Coming in to break my heart. Make it like an operation, but I ain't one of your patients. Turn it on, it's waiting, and I don't play that game. So it's just to kind of keep the chronology. it's been you said you were 25 26 when you connected with Andrew like 24 25 24 25 okay and then wrote the song around started there and then how many years it's I think people don't necessarily realize how long a movie can be in development so k-pop demon hunters was seven years from pitch to screen how early on you know if you can remember the year or whatever did you first hear about it and and obviously how did you first hear about it i first heard about k-pop demon hunters end of 2019 daniel rojas is a friend of mine who actually was on the project before me and he's the one who kind of like brought it up to me i was very excited how did it what was the he was like just hush hush there's like this project that's happening and it's like the first animated film big budgeted film based in korea and that was just like what like an earworm so excited and he just like nothing official i'm not saying anything i'm just saying there is something maybe you can be a part of it but who knows that's what it was and we should just underscore you had never been involved with any film project before right no no no no so this has two co-directors k-pop demon hunters maggie king and chris apple hans and i want to ask you when did you first hear from them because that that makes it real right what was what was the initial outreach from that?

23:33I think what happened was like 2019, 2020, you know, Psycho came out. And that was a huge hit in Korea. And then COVID happened. So around that time, you know, they were talking about, you know, bringing me in maybe. And then I think COVID happened, that kind of like shifted things. And towards the end of the middle or end of 2020, they officially kind of brought me in kind of in the meetings and Zoom meetings and basically asked me and Daniel to write some songs that they were envisioning for some scenes and that was the intro song and the

24:05EJAE:mantra and this was kind of at that point being used to as like almost demos to pitch the movie right yeah exactly it wasn't like you're hired for the whole movie it was just kind of like let's fire like find some songwriters and producers who can like maybe help translate this vision that we have into music form and while we pitch this film so again seven years is a long time how did you i mean just take us through if you can like from that where it's just like no guarantee it's going anywhere to becoming a more solid thing so after that we got really good feedback um they they loved it and so they continued to work with me and daniel for like another year or two like 2021 a good amount they started like pitching us different like how would the boy band song for soda pop scene right they asked us for that one too and how would the duet sound like can you make a song for that or like finale song and like so many different things they actually did just like we were kind of like testing like how things would sound in general and i think you know i would write these demos and while doing this i'm also like starting my official like k-pop songwriting career too because of psycho like that brought open doors as well so i'm like growing as a writer while i'm also writing for the film i think that's kind of where they realize oh wow like her demos are very like oh like i i put a lot of pride on my demos because k-pop demos are very polished you have to like finish it and so yeah i think that's where it happened and then you know our amazing executive music producer you know eyes and draft came into the picture and then black label came in and then i think that's when things like jenna andrews and steven kirk lynn grim they started coming in like slowly one by one like 2022 I would say 2023 and Mark Sonnenblatt came also so yeah I think then they officially like brought me in around that time when you were brought in or went along officially right like went along the line though was it also raised that you the person who supposedly which we all know now is bs that you're there were issues with your voice for sm or whatever like when did these guys say actually we would like you not only to write the songs but also be the singing voice for rumi it was 2022.

26:41okay and how were you immediately uh sold on that idea no i remember writing these songs in the very beginning and i was just like having fun with because we would they were they were all zoom session guys um and we were just like joking and daniel's like would it be funny if you were roomie i'm like that'd be hilarious um hope it never happens because these songs are hard well that's right like you're writing really hard yeah yeah intentionally yeah when they asked me i was like are you sure like we have weird tastes in voices i don't know because i had it was very honestly really insecure of my voice i think around that time i did perfect vocal producing and had a great vocal chain that my fiance helped me make but like still i was very insecure so when like i would work with these songwriters they would be like you have an incredible voice like i thought that was like their way of being like you should sing the demo you know like i don't have to i thought about it and i was like well it's an animated film i'm passionate about it first animated film based in korea let's do it i'm i don't have to be on screen right yep that's what's the thought well so also like it was very efficient because as a songwriter you know I'm seeing all the all the demos and these demos are very flashed out so I'm like confident I can sell the song you know um since I you know co-wrote them as well and the melodies as well I wrote the melody so like with some of the songs and yeah it was just like why not I'm like kind of skipping a step you know I could just vocal direct myself with Ian so at the end of the day correct me if this is wrong but I think you you said you wrote all the Korean lyrics in the movie except for Soda Pop.

28:28You did three songs, wrote or co-wrote on the other four, excuse me. Should we just save the one we're going to talk about the most for last, but can you just, the other four, give us just a quick reminder, if you would, of which those were? I co-wrote How It's Done.

28:51Your Idol.

28:56EJAE:on repeat without me in your head anytime it hurts play another verse i can be a sanctuary

29:16also was part of the arrangement and melody of the end of what it sounds like

29:27Is it true that the last one that you wrote was Golden?

29:43How did that happen? Why was that kind of, I know you said they're giving you prompts, kind of giving you assignments. Like, why would that have been the last one? I think that was such an important song. It was kind of like what Ian would say is the I want song. So like I want song is like, like Frozen Let It Go is like the I want song, right? So because there was so much pressure with that, you really needed to get that right. Also, like I think Ian told me that like they were trying to figure out the story as well. So it was honestly, these songs were coming off, like were written based on how the story was going.

30:19So if they weren't finished with that part, we're not writing about it. so I think they kind of figured out that part and then it was kind of interesting because we had so many different writers and they would kind of like audition for that scene right but the directors would choose hey can you try it oh how about you try it and hear different songs and I would actually sing the demos of songs I didn't write that was also for that scene and I guess you know Maggie and Chris were kind enough to give us the opportunity to write a song for that scene and that's kind of how Golden happened. So you mentioned this executive music producer on the film, Ian Eisendrath, and he's the one that first thought that you and Mark Sonnenblatt should work together.

30:58Can you just explain, you come from pretty different backgrounds. Talk about what his background is and why you think they felt you guys should work together. Well, I think it's because this movie is so unconventional. it's really hard because it's never been done before so we couldn't really reference anything there had to be pop songs that could stand alone but also be part of a storyline I come from a pop songwriting background I've never really written for a film so having storyline is so important and there's like language and lyrics that helps drive the story in a film that was really important so I think that's where Mark came into the picture and he's obviously in theater and he's very much an expert at that as well so he came especially for lyrics and I come from pop writing lyrics he comes from theater writing lyrics so that was really difficult trying to find this hybrid but essentially was perfect you know I if he was a mean person I don't know if this could have worked the way it was but that was like essential and were you guys literally in the same place when you were writing together or could you go back and forth how did it work it was 2023 I'm pretty sure he came in and I remember meeting on zoom he's like hey this he's gonna help with the lyric writing to make sure the song's within the story and drives the story and it was a zoom meeting we were talking and he was like where do you live I'm like New York he's like I'm in New York where I'm in Brooklyn I'm in Brooklyn and then literally like you want to meet right after our zoom meeting I was like where do you live and it was like literally like 15 minutes away i was like okay hung up went right to his place and we started writing immediately and that's how you guys would usually work and we wrote the intro song together at that time which is the how it's done scene yes with golden from what i've heard chris and maggie talk about like they gave you and maybe this was true for all the songs but for this one certainly there were certain like goal posts that you had to stay within there were certain things you had to include I think even maybe the a part of it was presented to you right to like basically what were the what were you told with Golden that you guys had to work within Maggie and Chris and Ian they would definitely give us a very long list of guidelines of like what needs to be said what each character has to express what each characters are like what is their I want and And also, melodically, we want something this.

33:32We want something catchy. We want something actually scaling up that we can use throughout the film. That kind of is a metaphor to Rumi reaching for a goal, reaching for a dream that feels so unreachable. And it has to be this impossible note that she will start keep cracking throughout the film and not able to reach because she's singing a song that's not her real voice. And so that was all in the guidelines, and it had to be catchy. and then that was just kind of where we started with. It was really important also for it to not be, Maggie was very, like don't make it sound too musical, was always her thing.

34:10Musical meaning like Broadway show? Broadway show, and Broadway, I love musicals by the way, but it can be translated into pop, it sometimes doesn't really work out. It can sound so on the nose sometimes or too wordy, whereas pop music, it has to be catchy, so it has to be concise. And so I think that was always like why Mark and I worked so well together. We would be each other's police for that He would write a line. I'm be like I don't want to sing that And then I would say something he'd be like cool, but it just sounds cool has nothing to do with the story So that was really important. And yes, that's how kind of where it happened Do you remember just like literally the the first breakthrough the second like what were the order in which the pieces kind of came together with golden yeah so again it was like 20 i don't remember where it was actually but it was the last song there's a deadline please give it quick and i was in korea i remember and ian sent the track from black label ideo 24 and teddy and basically this track they sent it over that's usually how the process was they would send us a track and we would write over it i remember i was in the taxi on the way to the dentist and you know this rarely happens but um I played the track on the way and some tracks just like inspire you really quickly and a melody comes out really fast and that's what happened with Golden's track it was a beautiful track and I felt this like bittersweetness in the in the melody in the chord progression and the sounds and that's when um I heard the first melody i heard was keeping in mind the guideline of like a upscale melody right and a high note that was the first melody i thought of and then i just keep kind of like freestyle things and after that i thought of

36:13like that was the melody that i thought of at that time and i was like oh this sounds great so i was so excited because we i had a session that night with mark because he was in new york and i was in korea so it's like opposite but then i went to dentist got my gold filling that's a sign guys and then came back home was so excited the moment i got home my half of my face was numb did not care put on my ableton and laid down the melody and for me when I lay it down I also have to lay everything down meaning if I think of a harmony I put all the harmonies down too and I always make sure before I you know before our zoom sessions I organize it like groups of different melodies I do like melody idea one the idea two so I could so I can give mark options which one he likes more and then we would Frankenstein it together so that's how it started well thank you that's awesome I think we might have a special opportunity tonight to actually hear a little bit about how this song came together is that possibly what our prop here is yes i think so

37:26yeah i mean

37:32yeah oh no where is it oh here it is well there is would you guys like to hear that little thing i did in the cab it's really funny you can hear the text going like it's so funny um let me see it's right here wait i thought this was more organized Take your time. No rush. Oh, here it is.

38:20Yeah.

38:30EJAE:Nice.

38:35so yeah how quickly did that become I mean I heard there were that again because Chris and Maggie seem to be they've said themselves they're pretty demanding and exacting and asking for revisions and things how many kind of incarnations did golden go through on route to becoming what we here now? I think the general like structure what you hear like the verse the pre and chorus were pretty set it was more like the bridge that was oh that took so long wow that took like months trying to figure out should we have a bridge well how long is this bridge fitting the scene is the scene too long there was a lot of just like back and forth with that so yeah there's a lot of renditions in that part.

39:26I think like, I think Golden had probably like eight, ten versions. Yeah. And certain things that now, you know, people, you know, just know and love about it, but maybe as it was coming together were conversations, like the fact that it has Korean lyrics in there as well, like was that a conversation? Was that... Absolutely. Yeah. That was always important, especially like for Maggie, you know, and for, you know, Sony and everyone, you know, that was like definitely We had to have Korean in there So but it was also important because like, you know, the main audience would be in the States That's where I was debuting.

40:04So you can't have all of them in Korean Then they wouldn't understand the story. The songs are driving the story. So that was very important So we were putting strategically where to put Korean where you can still understand because it's mainly in English I'm still be able to understand the storyline in the in the songs and at the time you were writing golden had you already been had it already been determined that you were also going to sing it or were you writing no yeah it was it was so you knew then that you were gonna have to go really yep so what happened was like i put that scratch vocal and then i came home and laid it down i was like oh my god it's so high and i tried so hard to change the born to be i was like born to be or like born to be or i don't know and then mark and i was just looking at you like oh we have to do born to be because like as a songwriter you just kind of know where you have to go you have to go where the track tells you to go and yeah i know it's just like oh well it's okay it's animated film that's right i'll have to sing it live you could have a few takes right yeah well that brings up the next thing which kind of blew my mind which is the other ladies of huntrix when did you two first meet the premiere well the first time i didn't having all of them all two of them like all three of us meet was the premiere i met them individually because i was also a songwriter so i would come into vocal director sometimes and or obviously come in for my sessions as well so separately in new york but you never sang the song together not at all so how did that work you how do you even i i guess just logistically how does that work i mean first of all like during this whole process like we would always i was one of the people who also had to rec would recommend artists to maybe sing for me or or genu and like you know i also like recommended andrew maybe andrew should sing it who knows you know um but audrey and you know ray on me they i'm huge fans of their music and so i was like why not you know and when i saw them i was like yes like this makes so much sense and it was so hilarious because audrey like i met her when i when she was 15 like 14 and this was when i was also a baby in songwriting this is around the time i was writing wrote psycho like right before it audrey actually knew andrew too andrew's just like the connector but like he brought her in and he like she was interested in songwriting and so i remember she was like a little girl so innocent with her white t-shirt and pink backpack and she was like hi and then you're like let's write a gospel song like we literally wrote a gospel song together i still have it someday i'll show it but yeah and like incredible singer herself and then fast forward to right now like when i met her at the studio she's like this cool girl she grew up she's tall like cool baggy jeans and so stylish and she was just like hey honey it's so good to see you what's up like it's so me and like like she's so cool like she looks intimidating but she's also she's so soft she's incredibly caring but that was like i was like oh my god this is mira and then next day or a couple days later i saw uh ray ami and she's like i met her inside the studio i was like kind of in the side and she was ian was just kind of like watching her and then like ray was just like going off i can't curse right okay say whatever you want okay she was like i remember like because ian's was vocal directing us so he's usually talking but he wasn't he didn't need to because that girl was directing herself and she was like every time she would get something wrong she's like, bitch, get it together.