A Swedish pronunciation mishap changed everything. Joe Jonas's producers wanted to say "Sex on the Beach" but what came out — "Cake by the Ocean" — was so absurd and funny that the entire room collapsed into laughter. Twenty minutes later, they had a song. That song would reach number nine on the Billboard Hot 100, and at its center was a Korean-American guitarist named JinJoo Lee — the second person of Korean descent to crack the Billboard top 10.
After Jonas Brothers: Joe's Reinvention
After the Jonas Brothers dissolved, Joe Jonas found himself carrying the "pop idol leftover" label he desperately wanted to shed. He worked with Malay, producer for Frank Ocean, but the results felt too heavy. "I don't want to be sad," Jonas said. "I was like, I like these songs, but — I'm happy!" He needed something that felt true to his actual emotional state.
The solution came from an unlikely place: the Jonas Brothers' own touring band. Drummer Jack Lawless, guitarist JinJoo Lee, and bassist Cole Whittle already knew how Jonas moved on stage, what made him come alive, and what the audience wanted from him. In 2015, they formalized the chemistry into DNCE. JinJoo Lee, the South Korean-American guitarist, brought a disco-funk sensibility to the group that would define their sound — a throwback aesthetic pointing forward.
The Twenty-Minute Accident That Hit Number Nine
The writing session that produced "Cake by the Ocean" had been stuck for days. Swedish production duo Mattman & Robin — Robin Fredrikson and Mattias Larsson — mentioned they'd spent the night before drinking "Cake by the Oceans." Jonas stared at them. "Do you mean Sex on the Beach?" he asked. The Swedes' accented English had turned a cocktail name into a completely different phrase. The room erupted. Before the laughter had fully subsided, someone said: "Wait — there's something here."
The song was written in approximately 20 minutes. Lyricist Justin Tranter joined Jonas and the Swedish duo, and the words poured out as quickly as the melody had arrived. Inspired by 1970s disco-funk, the track features a bouncing bass line, clean guitar riffs from JinJoo Lee, and a chorus sticky enough to survive hundreds of plays. The original version contained some colorful language; a radio-friendly version was created separately. Released September 18, 2015 on Republic Records, the song premiered on New York's Z100 and almost immediately began its ascent.
"We'd had writer's block all week, and then we wrote this song in like ten minutes flat."— Joe Jonas, DNCE vocalist
The Korean Fingerprint on a Global Hit
"Cake by the Ocean" debuted at number 79 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 2015, climbing to number nine by March 2016 — its peak coming in the 19th week, which is an unusually long rise for a chart hit. It stayed on the chart for 46 weeks total. The song reached the top 10 in Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK, and topped the chart in Japan. The RIAA awarded it 5× Platinum certification.
JinJoo Lee's presence in DNCE made her the second person of Korean descent to appear in a Billboard Hot 100 top-10 hit. DNCE went on hiatus in 2018, but "Cake by the Ocean" has remained a fixture in Jonas Brothers live sets ever since. A mispronunciation, a burst of laughter, and twenty minutes of inspired writing produced a song that a decade later still sounds like a summer afternoon that refuses to end.
