The singing stars of KPop Demon Hunters offered an emotional rebuke of the music industry while accepting the Women Of The Year award at Billboard Women In Music event at the Hollywood Palladium.
Receiving the award, which was the final honour of the night, each member spoke of the struggles of being both an Asian performer and a woman in an industry that limits their opportunities.
Member EJAE began by saying: “As an Asian woman, the lack of representation was obvious to me” she told the crowd, referring to her childhood growing up in the US. “I rarely saw other artists who looked like me on western stages,” so she aspired toward “becoming a K-pop idol. When that didn’t work out, I thought I was done.”
“But when I found songwriting, I realised that music itself never questioned me, because music doesn’t see race or gender. It only asks for the truth. And when I brought my full truth into it — my voice, my Koreanness, my womanness —everything began to shift. I realised that as a woman, our power has never been in fitting in, but is in our resilience to speak our truth.
“So I just want to say to every woman who may feel unseen, your voice is something to honour. Your story is not something to dilute. It’s something to amplify. And your identity is not a barrier, it’s your power.”
Rei Ami followed with a blunt criticism of the music industry. “Being a woman in this male-dominated industry is honestly ass. Sometimes we have to work twice as hard with a smile on our faces as the world nitpicks every part of our being” she said.
“First, we’re too skinny and then we’re too fat. It goes from, ‘Oh, she’s giving nothing’ to ‘Why is she being so extra?’ It seems utterly impossible to exist. Oh, and God forbid you’re confident, they’ll crucify you for that. But I think that’s why they’re so obsessed, because, well, there’s nothing more intimidating than a confident woman who knows what she wants.
“Our ability to persevere and show up is an absolute superpower. So thank you to all the women in this room for using their superpowers to inspire, lead and protect. We are not too much; we are not too loud. We are exactly who the fuck we think we are.”
Finally, Audrey Nuna became visibly emotional, joking: “I’ve been known to be the emotionally constipated one out of this group… They have never seen me cry in real life, so it’s not gonna happen tonight.”
Her bandmates replied: “Yes it is!” Nuna continued: “From when I first started releasing music back in 2019 to this moment now, I really never identified with the boxes that Korean American women were expected to fit into. And quite frankly, I didn’t even know how to even begin to try to fit into those boxes.”
“So to receive this honour and represent a song in a film that affirms this notion that the world needs women to show up as their fullest, most whole selves, their weirdest selves, their smelliest selves, whatever it is, it’s rewarding beyond words.”
“I think we all grow up being fed ideas of what our role is supposed to be as a woman in this world,” Nuna concluded. “And something that navigating this industry in particular has shown me first-hand is that women are natural-born leaders — and they’re the best at it. Sorry, I’m just gonna say it. And when women genuinely support one another from the heart deep in their core.”
EJAE, Ami, and Nuna all recently appeared alongside KATSEYE on stage at Coachella, to perform the KPop Demon Hunters hit ‘Golden’.