Tate McRae broke the Honmoon! “Golden,” the megahit song from the Netflix animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters, lost the Song of the Summer award to “Just Keep Watching” by McRae at the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards.
“Golden” was snubbed of its title at the VMAs last night despite being the most popular song from the animated film ever since its debut on Netflix in June. Song of the Summer is a fan-voted category like the rest of the awards, and it was competing against 15 other songs, including “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter, “Ordinary” by Alex Warren, "The Subway" by Chappell Roan, and of course, McRae’s “Just Keep Watching.”
To put the popularity of “Golden” compared to “Just Keep Watching” into perspective, the K-Pop Demon Hunters song maintained its No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the last two months. Meanwhile, “Just Keep Watching,” featured in F1: The Movie (which came out a week after K-Pop Demon Hunters on June 27) peaked at No. 33. People talked about — and sang — “Golden” and the movie it came from way more than “Just Keep Watching,” and somehow VMA fans gave the latter song more votes than the former.
The least popular song robbing the Song of the Summer VMA from the most popular song from a hit Netflix animated film strips the category of any meaning and further justifies society’s disrespect for animation as an artistic medium. I’m convinced the people who voted for “Just Keep Watching” to win over “Golden” didn’t watch K-Pop Demon Hunters over the summer — and have bad taste in music.
