KPop Demon Hunters Is 7 Weeks From Tying Billboard's Record
KPop Demon Hunters has spent 55 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Soundtracks chart. Seven more weeks there and it ties the all-time record — a mark Disney's Moana set back in 2016 and has held ever since. I pulled up Billboard's own running list Tuesday morning to check the math myself, and it holds up.
The Record It's Chasing
Billboard's Top Soundtracks chart has existed since June 2001, and in that time exactly 12 albums have logged 25 or more weeks at No. 1. Moana tops the list at 62 weeks, a run that started the day after Christmas 2016 and simply never got dislodged. Frozen II sits at 51. Barbie: The Album managed 33. KPop Demon Hunters, which first hit No. 1 on July 5, 2025, has already passed every one of them except Moana itself, per Billboard.
It hasn't been a clean sweep the whole way. The soundtrack has actually spent 59 weeks total on the chart, and lost the top spot for exactly four of them: one week each to Wicked: For Good, the perennial A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charli xcx's Wuthering Heights, and the soundtrack to this year's TV hit Heated Rivalry. Every other week for over a year, it's been back on top by the next Tuesday.
Seven consecutive No. 1 weeks from here ties Moana. An eighth breaks it outright — a longer runway than "any week now," but the pattern over the last year says it's a matter of when, not if.
Worth sitting with for a second: Billboard also notes the five longest-running No. 1 soundtracks in the chart's 25-year history are all animated films. KPop Demon Hunters isn't an outlier format-wise, but it is the first of those five built around an original K-pop-style score instead of Disney-style musical numbers, and it's doing this entirely off Netflix streaming momentum rather than a theatrical run driving soundtrack sales the way it did for Frozen or Encanto.
The Real K-Pop Group Behind the Fictional One
Here's the part casual moviegoers sometimes miss: the fictional girl group HUNTR/X isn't the only K-pop act on this soundtrack. TWICE recorded their own version of "Takedown" for the film's end credits, sung by Jeongyeon, Jihyo, and Chaeyoung, three-ninths of an actual, currently touring group rather than the animated cast. It was released through Republic Records on June 20, 2025, the same day the film dropped, and went on to peak at No. 50 on the Hot 100 as its own single, according to Wikipedia.
That's TWICE lending their actual voices to a soundtrack that's now closing in on a Billboard record most artists never sniff in a full career, on a movie they didn't star in. Say what you want about how oversaturated K-pop-adjacent content can feel by now. That's a legitimately strange flex, and I don't think the crossover gets enough credit for it next to HUNTR/X's own numbers.
"Golden" Already Has the Hardware
The song actually carrying most of that 59-week streak is "Golden," performed in-film by the fictional HUNTR/X (voiced by EJAE, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami). It topped the Hot 100 for eight nonconsecutive weeks and won the Oscar for best original song — the first winning song credited to seven writers, which under Academy rules means the trophy gets physically shared since no more than four statues are awarded per category. It also picked up the Grammy for best song written for visual media, and the film itself won a second Oscar for best animated feature, per the same Billboard rundown linked above.
None of that is why the chart record matters on its own, but it's the reason the record isn't a fluke. A song doesn't sit at No. 1 for over a year on momentum alone.
Streaming It Now
The film is still Netflix-exclusive worldwide, so there's no separate regional gatekeeping to worry about the way there sometimes is with K-dramas: no waiting on a second platform, no country-by-country delay. The soundtrack itself is on every major platform — Spotify, Apple Music, and Melon all carry both "Golden" and the HUNTR/X version of "Takedown," and the TWICE version streams under Republic Records on the same services if you specifically want the Jeongyeon/Jihyo/Chaeyoung cut.
Billboard's charts refresh every Tuesday (that's still Tuesday afternoon or evening if you're checking from the UK or Korea by the time the numbers post), so the next seven data points arrive over the next seven weeks. If the soundtrack holds the pattern it's shown for 55 straight weeks, the record-tying week should land sometime in late October — worth bookmarking Billboard's own chart page if you want to watch it happen in something close to real time, rather than read about it after the fact.
I'll be checking back in when it does.
For now, "Golden" is still worth the replay even a year in, and that's not nothing.
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