🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

XO, Kitty star Anthony Keyvan knew the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before spin-off series would feature Korean pop hits. But even the actor, who plays Kitty Song Covey’s (Anna Cathcart) best friend, Q, didn’t know the rom-com would be this K-pop heavy until he was rerecording dialogue for a few scenes long after principal photography wrapped.

“I heard parts of the scoring and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve heard this on TikTok. This is a very popular K-pop song,’ ” Keyvan tells Tudum. 

Picking up after To All the Boys: Always and Forever, XO, Kitty follows Oregon teen Kitty to South Korea, where she enrolls in the international high school her mother attended decades earlier. To fully immerse the audience in Kitty’s new home, the majority of the show’s soundtrackis comprised of songs from Korean pop artists. 

Keyvan tells Tudum that he got into K-pop while shooting the show in Seoul. Or, at least his TikTok got him into K-pop.

“After living in Korea, to this day K-pop dances, BTS and BLACKPINK at Coachella is all over my For You page. I just feel like everybody loves K-pop, so why not put it in the show?” he says. 

Gia Kim, who plays Q and Kitty’s classmate, Yuri, grew up in South Korea and had her own K-pop phase. “The height of my K-pop-loving days was definitely high school,” says Kim, who still loves the genre. “I was really happy to know that they put all these really big K-pop songs in there, because K-pop has a huge worldwide following now and I’m proud of how well it’s doing, as a Korean. I’m happy that they incorporated all these great songs in there because I feel like a lot of people who love K-pop will love this [show], too.”

And who knows? They may even discover new songs they love, too. K-pop ballad fan Sang Heon Lee, who plays Min Ho, Shazamed his fair share of tunes from the show’s soundtrack. “There were times where I was like, ‘Oh, this is a good song. Who is it?’ And then I’ll Shazam it, and then I’ll be like, ‘Oh, right. Oh, is this her? OK,’ ” says Lee. “There was this artist called Jeon Somi — she sang this song and then it was so catchy. I love the song.”

In fact, Jeon Somi features multiple times in the soundtrack, and XO, Kitty music supervisors Lindsay Wolfington and Laura Webb tell Tudum that they discovered her thanks to music producer Teddy Park, who also produces BLACKPINK. “What Lindsay and I really like to do is introduce audiences to new songs that maybe people don't know as much,” Webb says. “K-pop is everywhere, but [we wanted to showcase] some other bands that maybe aren’t as well-known.”

Click here to listen to the full soundtrack, and read on for more insight into Webb and Wolfington’s process — plus a complete list of every song in XO, Kitty.

Episode 101: “XO”

Anna of the North “Nobody”

“We begin with an Anna of the North song very intentionally because Kitty’s still in Portland,” says Wolfington. “It’s the beginning of the series before Kitty takes off on her own, and Anna of the North’s ‘Lovers’ was a big breakout hit from the hot tub in the first movie.”

GRAE “Spinning”
Seventeen “HOT”

Explains Webb, “For Min Ho’s entrance, it was just fun to use a hot boy song and give him his due. We love that character so much, so you have to give a fun song to do him justice.”

BTS “Telepathy”
Momoland “BAAM”
BLACKPINK “Pink Venom”

Yuri also gets her own entrance song. Put simply, “She’s the coolest; BLACKPINK’s the coolest,” says Wolfington.

Jeon Somi “What You Waiting For”
Rayelle “Whatcha Thinka Me Now”
Dead End Kids “Up and Away”
Seventeen “Dar+ling”

Episode 102: “WTF”

BLACKPINK “You Never Know”
Nakwon “Dance!”
Clancy “Look at Me Now” 
Claud “Soft Spot”
Jeon Somi “XOXO”

Come on — it’s the title of the show. It was a no-brainer, really, says Webb. “We sent it off to [co-showrunners Jenny Han and Sascha Rothchild], and they were just like, ‘Yes, we have to.’ ”

Kilder “You & Me”

Episode 103: “KISS”

Emmit Fenn “The Chase”
Tears for Fears “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”

When Webb and Wolfington chose this track in the To All the Boys movies, they had no idea how important it would become to the franchise. “It’s a callback to the films. This was a song that was really important to Kitty and Lara Jean’s mom. It felt like full circle,” says Webb.

Love X Stereo “Deeper Than the Dark”

Episode 104: “TGIF”

Stray Kids “Venom”
Stray Kids “Maniac”

Both of the Stray Kids songs play when we meet Kitty’s new roommate, a gamer who livestreams literally every aspect of her life. “K-pop’s production is just so fun, and unique and bombastic,” says Webb. “This roommate is such a weirdo in the best way. It just plays into the comedy really well.”

The Aces “Don’t Freak”
TWICE “I Can’t Stop Me”
Hi-Five “Be with You”
CSCS “Oh Yeah”

Episode 105: “TBH”

Juju B. Goode “Time Machine”
Wonho “Best Shot”
Tears for Fears “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”
(G)I-DLE “Hann (Alone in Winter)”

Han gave Wolfington and Webb a list of K-dramas to watch as they put together the XO, Kitty soundtrack. This song pays homage to the use of music in K-dramas, specifically Crash Landing on You, and “was an obvious  end-of-episode montage with lots happening,” says Wolfington.

Episode 106: “BYOB”

Sweet the Kid “Cocoa”
ITZY “B[OO]M-BOXX”
Marc Jackson Burrows “Now Go”
Edge of Silence (feat. Zuddi) “Pink Sky Complex”
88rising, BIBI “The Weekend”

This song, from independent artist BIBI, plays when Yuri and her friends perform at Min Ho’s party. Says Webb, “We love the song and we wanted to find something that would be great to choreograph a dance to, and that one felt fun.”

Kali J “Own It”
Juju B. Goode “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”

Webb and Wolfington commissioned this cover from Goode, another independent musician. “His vocals are beautiful,” says Webb. 

Dabin “Smoke Signals”

Episode 107: “TIL”

Dabin “Smoke Signals”
Jeon Somi “Dumb Dumb”
JETTE “How Bout You (Inst)”
ITZY “Icy”
Glen Check “Dazed & Confused”

Wolfington says that choosing a song for Kitty’s first kiss with Dae had to be perfect. “ ‘Dazed & Confused’ had a lot of energy to it so it propelled the scene, but also had that fuzzy romance feeling, which we love.”

Episode 108: “LFG”

fromis_9 “Stay This Way”

Make out montage time! “Stay This Way” has a lot of change-ups, says Webb, which is great for editing. “Every montage is a little bit different,” explains Wolfington. “This is a fast montage, so this song has lot of pace. It’s playful. You could go really sexy with this, but then that wouldn’t really be the show. It depends on what your montage needs.”

Glen Check “Sins”
Juju B. Goode “Rainbow Freestyle”
Edge of Silence (feat. Yun Hee Won) “Monologue”

Episode 109: “SNAFU”

La Felix “Comes & Goes”
Carolyn Jordan, Craig Hardy, Peter Boyes “I’m a Winner”
Haiku Hands “Dare You Not To Dance”
John Chuck & the Class “Business as Usual”
Miso “Alone”
Park Hye Jin “Y DON’T U”

This music cue kicks in when Kitty confesses to Dae that she has feelings for someone else. “He’s pissed and he’s going to go kick some ass. It’s not a long use before the end credits, but it’s just really cool production then punch on the black,” says Wolfington. “We found a song that was K-pop, but perfect lyrics for what was going on and really made a statement at the end of the episode.”

Episode 110: “OTP”

Mona “Run Away”
Vegyn, Soo Joo “W8ing 4 U”

You hear three minutes of this song, which “starts slow, and builds and builds,” playing up the tension of Dae’s big airport chase to Kitty in this episode, says Wolfington. 

Everglow “No Good Reason”
Caveboy “Guess I’ve Changed”
Marina “About Love”

“What’s fun for us is tying it back or growing from the To All the Boys universe,” says Wolfington, particularly of this song from P.S. I Still Love You. “We have all these little winks tying you back, but at the same time, the entire sound is also very different because it’s poppier, it’s K-pop and it’s Kitty. Lara Jean always had this kind of hesitation about doing things and going out on her own, and Kitty doesn’t. She’s unabashedly herself, and I think that comes across in the music.”

‘XO, Kitty’ Main Trailer