HUNTR/X’s ‘Golden’ Makes More Inroads for K-Pop in Top 10 of Billboard’s Pop Airplay Chart
2025 continues to be a key year for K-pop on top 40 radio, as HUNTR/X’s “Golden” reaches the top 10, rising two spots to No. 10, on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart (dated Sept. 13).
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The song from the soundtrack to the smash animated Netflix film KPop Demon Hunters is the sixth Pop Airplay top 10 by an act with ties to Korean pop, and the first since BLACKPINK’s ROSÉ and Bruno Mars’ “APT.,” which became the chart’s first such No. 1, for five weeks, in February-March.
As previously reported, “Golden” crowns the multimetric, all-genre Billboard Hot 100 for a fourth week, with HUNTR/X — the singing trio of EJAE, Audrey Nuna and REI AMI (in the roles of KPop Demon Hunters star characters Rumi, Mira and Zoey) — having become the first female group associated with Korean pop to top the chart. (EJAE and REI AMI were born in Seoul, South Korea; Nuna is from New Jersey.)
Here are the select six K-pop-associated Pop Airplay top 10s, beginning with PSY’s “Gangnam Style” in 2012:
- No. 1 (five weeks), “APT.,” ROSÉ & Bruno Mars, beginning Feb. 1, 2025
- No. 5, “Dynamite,” BTS, Dec. 19, 2020
- No. 7, “Cupid,” Fifty Fifty, Aug. 5, 2023
- No. 7, “Butter,” BTS, Aug. 7, 2021
- No. 10 (to date), “Golden,” HUNTR/X: EJAE, Audrey Nuna & REI AMI, Sept. 13, 2025
- No. 10, “Gangnam Style,” PSY, Oct. 27, 2012
Pop Airplay chart reporter KMVQ (99.7 Now) San Francisco leads all panelists with nearly 1,000 plays to date for “Golden,” dating to its first spin in late June. SiriusXM’s Hits 1 and KIIS (102.7 KIIS-FM) Los Angeles have also given the song prominent exposure.
The Pop Airplay chart ranks songs by weekly plays on more than 150 mainstream top 40 radio stations monitored by Mediabase, with data provided to Billboard by Luminate.
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