The soundtrack to Netflix’s empowering, action-packed and heartwarming KPop Demon Hunters hauls in a fourth Hot 100 top 10, as HUNTR/X’s “How It’s Done,” the act’s second top 10, after “Golden,” bounds 14-10. “How It’s Done” was driven by 17.2 million streams (up 2%) in the tracking week.
HUNTR/X and KPop Demon Hunters adversaries Saja Boys come to a draw, each with two Hot 100 top 10s: the latter’s “Your Idol” keeps at its No. 4 high and “Soda Pop” leaps 10-5. The former boasts a gain of nearly 1% to 20.4 million streams and the latter, a 4% lift to 18.4 million. (“It is annoyingly catchy,” HUNTR/X’s Rumi concedes of “Soda Pop” in the film.)
Despite their on-screen combat, HUNTR/X and Saja Boys — whose music is voiced by Andrew Choi, Neckwav, Danny Chung, Kevin Woo and samUIL Lee — combine to make KPop Demon Hunters the first soundtrack ever to generate four simultaneous Hot 100 top 10s.
It’s also the first soundtrack with at least four Hot 100 top 10s overall since Waiting To Exhale reeled off a record five in 1995-96. The only other soundtracks with four top 10s each: Saturday Night Fever (in 1977-78), Grease (1978) and Prince and the Revolution’s Purple Rain (1984-85).
Meanwhile, the last time a soundtrack sent three songs to the Hot 100’s top five simultaneously, as KPop Demon Hunters has now done via “Golden,” “Your Idol” and “Soda Pop”? April 15, 1978, when three Saturday Night Fever songs strutted in the tier: Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” (No. 1) and “Stayin’ Alive” (No. 2) and Yvonne Eliiman’s “If I Can’t Have You” (also written by the trio; No. 5).
“It’s so thrilling that people are hearing the songs in two ways,” KPop Demon Hunters executive music producer Ian Eisendrath recently told Billboard. “Some are loving the film, and the film is making the songs hits … and then some people are just encountering the songs, and the songs are making the film a hit.”
The movie’s profile will be further enhanced thanks to sing-along theater screenings held Aug. 23-24, with any related boost in its songs to be reflected on next week’s Billboard charts, dated Sept. 6 and encompassing streaming, airplay and sales Aug. 22-28.
