SATV, Kathmandu, Feb.02: Golden, the inescapable hit from the movie KPop Demon Hunters, has become the first ever K-Pop song to win a Grammy Award.
Performed by the fictional band Huntr/x, it picked up best song for visual media as the awards ceremony got underway in Los Angeles. It is also nominated for song of the year.
Other early winners included British stars Yungblud, The Cure and FKA Twigs, while the Dalai Lama won best audiobook and eight year old Aura V became the youngest ever Grammy recipient, for best children's album.
Ahead of the main ceremony, Kendrick Lamar took home three awards, including best rap song for TV Off, which could bode well for his chances in the night's main category, album of the year.
The Compton rapper swept last year's ceremony, winning five prizes including song and record of the year for his scathing diss track Not Like Us.
He faces strong competition at this year's ceremony from Lady Gaga, Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber and Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny, whose musically expansive album Debí Tirar Más Fotos, is tipped to become the first Spanish-language record to win album of the year.
Released last June, KPop Demon Hunters became Netflix's most-viewed movie of all time, with more than 480 million views.
The propulsive soundtrack, full of candy-coated earworms, became the first to top the Billboard charts since 2022, when Disney's Encanto created a similar craze.
Its success at the Grammys suggests a growing recognition of Korean pop's cultural and commercial force.
Blackpink singer Rosé is also up for three prizes at Sunday's ceremony for her song APT, including song and record of the year.
Last August, the Recording Academy announced that a group of artists, producers and songwriters who had made significant contributions to K-pop had joined the organisation's voting body, including Seventeen singer Woozi, Enhypen's Jungwon and Le Sserafim's Huh Yunjin.
