This podcast episode is part of the Billboard editorial staff’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 list. Find our accompanying KPop Demon Hunters Cast essay here, and all the rest of our essays and podcasts related to the list here.
There were a lot of predictable successes in the last year of pop music — hit singles, albums and tours from artists who we’ve seemingly known forever at this point, who’ve been successful for their whole careers and who just kept their winning streaks rolling in 2025. But that just made the few true surprise success stories we got over the course of the year even more gratifying, reminding us that in pop music, you still really never know where the next big thing is coming from. And nothing and no one could have possibly caught us more off-guard than the two fictional-turned IRL hitmakers from the universe of Netflix animated musical smash KPop Demon Hunters: HUNTR/X and Saja Boys.
This Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast looks at how the cast of KPop Demon Hunters ended up at No. 6 on our list — thanks to a year where the movie and its soundtrack grew from cult success to global sensation with blinding velocity, eventually taking over streaming, the airwaves and even broadcast TV in equal measure. (You can find Abby Webster’s essay on the year of HUNTR/X and Saja Boys here.) Today, Billboard branded producer and social manager Meghan Mahar — who also hosted the real-life ladies behind HUNTR/X in Billboard‘s Takes Us Out video — joins host Andrew Unterberger to recount the joy and excitement behind perhaps the year’s biggest pop culture phenomenon, and where both the fictional and real-life artists behind its success might go from here.
In the process, we ask all the most pressing questions about the KPop Demon Hunters cast’s 2025: How did a movie with such a cult-y title and concept end up being so universal? Should we have broken this entry into individual entries for HUNTR/X and Saja Boys? How long can the cast’s holiday-season media takeover stretch into 2026? Why does listing the hits on this soundtrack turn us both into Travis Kelce? Will EJAE, Rei Ami and Audrey Nuna be able to parlay their newfound visibility and name recognition into breakout solo success? And perhaps most importantly: How the hell did we go about comparing the pop star year of this collective of fictional pop groups to the entirely IRL pop stars on this list?
Check it out above, along with a YouTube playlist of some of the greatest moments of KPop Demon Hunters Cast’s 2025 — all of which are discussed on the pod — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for complete podcast coverage of this year’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 list!
And as we say in every one of these GPS podcast posts — if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:
Transgender Law Center
Trans Lifeline
Destination Tomorrow
Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe
Also, please consider giving your local congresspeople a call in support of trans rights, with contact information you can find on 5Calls.org.
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