Hitmakers’ Jenna Andrews and Stephen Kirk Urge the Importance of Uplifting Music’s Unsung Heroes: Songwriters (Exclusive)

Songwriters Jenna Andrews and Stephen Kirk are behind some of modern music’s biggest hits.

With notches on their belt ranging from K-pop to hip-hop, the couple is preparing to show the world what they’re capable of on Netflix’s new reality TV show Hitmakers, now streaming. Luckily for them, their chemistry, both as a songwriting team and romantic couple, was as smooth as “Butter” — literally.

Andrews and Kirk met via Zoom during the pandemic as they were both hired to help write “Butter” for BTS, a song that spent numerous weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. 

They started to take notice of each other’s talents when Kirk was working on the melody of the track, and Andrews added her own flair to it.

“This is probably day two of me meeting her, and she sings her version. She had written the chorus to ‘Butter.’ The melody was the same, but the lyrics were different. I remember hearing her sing it, and I was like, ‘Oh, this girl is like… She’s magic,’ ” he recalls to PEOPLE.

Reflecting on “Butter,” the duo believes that at least part of the song’s success was due to their instant chemistry. Andrews likens it to the bond the Na’vi form in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, as the characters intertwine tails to show strong connection.

She says, “The chemistry has to be it, right? I think we had that initially. The tails touched, we had it whether or not maybe we realized it.”

Together Kirk and Andrews have had countless successes, both as a duo and individually before meeting.

Their collection of hits also includes songs for artists such as BTS, Sabrina Carpenter, Drake and Nelly Furtado. Recently, they’ve once again struck gold with the soundtrack of Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters, for which they wrote two songs: “Free” and “What It Sounds Like.”

The soundtrack peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. 

Despite rubbing shoulders with some of music’s biggest stars, songwriting is a generally overlooked job, relegated to tiny print in the credits. Kirk and Andrews explain that it’s a selfless job, where you have to be a jack of all trades, willing to adapt to the needs of an artist on a case-by-case basis.

“You decide what tool you are bringing to the equation that particular day,” Andrews says. 

Both artists emphasize the importance of a relentless work ethic and doing your homework as the key to songwriting success.

“In order to be great at anything you got to be a student of the game,” Kirk says, making a connection to the sports he played when he was younger. “Our watching film is listening to music, both old and new. Even when I’m not at a hip-hop session, I’m sharpening those tools.”

Andrews says mastering all the skills of a songwriter takes a classic “10,000 hours.” The couple learned and grew by devoting countless hours to studying their favorite songs and learning every nook and cranny to figure out how it all ticked. 

Even with their hands in some of the biggest songs of the decade, Kirk and Andrews, along with a majority of songwriters, are not necessarily celebrities themselves. That’s about to change with Hitmakers. 

Andrews and Kirk are stepping into their own spotlights on the Netflix series, which highlights a group of songwriters as they work with the world’s biggest artists such as Shaboozey, John Legend and LISA of BLACKPINK to write hit songs. 

For Andrews and Kirk, reality TV dramatically changed the way they worked. “I went in with no expectations as to what to expect because I’ve never done anything like this,” Kirk says, adding, “There’s a lot of challenges that come with trying to be vulnerable or trying to tap into that other level of your soul.”

Andrews had to adapt her work style to fit TV, explaining, “Normally I’m a little bit more insular as a writer, so having that many cameras was definitely intimidating.” 

Regardless of the challenges, the duo persevered. Kirk explains, “You don’t get good from your natural instinct or your natural talent. You get good from repetition. So it’s just day one with all the cameras. It was really challenging, but you’re just doing it every day.” 

Beyond making music in front of the camera, Kirk and Andrews lived with their castmates, leading to both deep connections and discomfort.

Kirk admits, “We saw an inside look at people’s vulnerabilities, their family lives, and what makes them tick as a person, an outside songwriter.” In the songwriting business, that’s a good thing, as Andrews says, “The more you get to know somebody, the better the song usually turns out because there is a vulnerability there.”

Andrews and Kirk were the only couple on Hitmakers, which came as a double-edged sword. They provided each other a source of comfort and a familiar face amidst the unfamiliar situation.

However, they underestimated how difficult trying to bring their real-life romance into juicy TV would become. Kirk says, “Things that weren’t fights between us or arguments between us, or even a moment between us. They would be like… ‘For TV, we got to make this a moment.’ The weird thing about it is when you’re in that situation, things that aren’t even real start to almost kind of feel real. Not for us, but just for the rest of the cast to us and with us.”

Andrews says, “There were a couple times that you’ll see if you watch the show, there’s things that I didn’t even realize were bad at the moment. I was just like, ‘Oh, this is normally how it is to be in a relationship, you just kind of joke and make fun of each other, and that’s the dynamic. That’s how you know you have a good relationship, a best friendship, all those things.’ But I think the way that they spun it, like [Kirk] said, it was just funny.”

Now that the experience is over, both Kirk and Andrews are happy they took the plunge into reality TV together. “We both came out of it being like, ‘It was so fun.’ I couldn’t imagine going by myself that’s for sure,” Andrews admits.

Kirk adds, “[The cast] all left there feeling really close and feeling like we had done something together that had never been done.”

On top of the personal satisfaction, Kirk and Andrews took pride in participating in a show that will hopefully shine a light on this often-overlooked section of the music industry. 

“A lot of times people will think just the artist is writing their own song, so they don’t know that there’s people behind the scenes that are actually helping to write those songs,” says Andrews. “I’m hoping that in that, people investigate more and do their research, and I think it leads to other questions and education in terms of what behind the scenes people do.”