Lead vocalist John Gourley stans Twice after falling “deep into K-pop” thanks to his daughter
Portugal. The Man are sealing the honmoon with some fiddles. On Friday, the band released a reimagined version of Kpop Demon Hunter‘s “Golden,” which features him singing the chart-topper as a folky, stripped-back ballad, on Amazon Music.
“I’ve recently fallen deep into K-pop — big fan of TWICE and others,” lead singer John Gourley said of the rendition in a press release. “But once ‘Golden’ found its way into my dreams, it was inescapable. I’ve sung this song a thousand times with our daughter and always loved the idea of breaking it down with an acoustic guitar and strings.”
The Portugal. The Man version spins the high-note, pop-produced version of the film and turns it on its head as a softer, acoustic ballad that almost gives it a new meaning. “It’s just such a beautiful arrangement,” Gourley said, adding in an Instagram post: “We stitched together a monster of a cover.”
The new rendition of “Golden” comes a week before the band is set to release their album Shish, featuring 10 tracks written about “the lessons he learned being raised in Alaska, but also some of the lessons he’s already learned raising his daughter,” who lives with a genetic disorder. The band is set to go on a tour immediately after the album’s release, starting in Portland, before stopping in Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Toronto, and more cities through mid-December.
A recent Rolling Stone story looked into the impact of Kpop Demon Hunters and how it became such a massive success, thanks to both the Netflix film and its accompanying earworm soundtrack, which included “Golden.” According to Luminate, the soundtrack had become “single-handedly responsible for around 43 percent of U.S. K-pop streaming volume” by early August 2025.
