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Twice’s “Cheer Up” – Cinnamon Bubblegum Part 2

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Twice began their successful journey with their show Sixteen, but the inciting incident, you could say, was “Like OOH-AHH”’s success. As stated in my article on “Like OOH-AHH”, Twice tapped into a new way of approaching bubblegum pop by adding a ton of spice to it and subverting the idol making machine. This is what I dubbed cinnamon bubblegum pop – definitely sweet, but with a powerful underlying kick. Now the question is – would this be a one time thing? Or would they continue this format?

All was answered by the time “Cheer Up” came along. “Cheer Up” is one of Twice’s most iconic music videos. It’s incredibly creative both in concept and in film technique. It’s a beautiful example of color correcting and editing – both of which are intrinsic to K-Pop – but it also shows what is most unique about Twice, which is their ability to subvert the expectations of what K-Pop idols are.

“Cheer Up” as a song is a very lighthearted song with a great hook. While it’s electronic predominantly, there is some instrumental elements and a beat that sounds almost like it belongs in a rock song not a pop song. It doesn’t have the best line distribution of K-Pop songs but generally speaking the verses give each member a moment to shine. The hook is balanced with English and Korean, though the English parts are accented and arguably mispronounced. However I think this adds to the charm so I have no complaints.

The concept of the video is introduced in the very first moment. We see a man with a camera instead of a head, with a colored magnifying/tinting lens in his hand, looking at all the girls as they eat in the kitchen. He finally sets his sights on Nayeon, puts magnifier in front of the camera lens.

Suddenly, the entire video changes. Nayeon is sitting on the floor, as she was previously, but she has a 90s-early 2000s era phone instead of a smartphone. The color grading is completely different, making it much darker, and we can see from the light from the windows that it’s supposed to be night. The room is much cleaner. She and her friends seem scared. It’s clear that the lens changed not just Nayeon, but the genre Nayeon appeared in.

In short, the video is about portraying each girl in a way that matches their personality by surrounding them with a genre of film or TV that clearly illustrates certain traits. However, there are a number of ways to interpret this idea. You could argue that each genre is supposed to represent each member in the real life – I don’t necessarily agree with this because certain members have either ultra-specific or ultra-broad genres applied to them, and it’s also hard to pick a genre that specifically encapsulates a person. There may be another interpretation though. The website kpopmap.com drew an explicit comparison between each member and a specific movie. Therefore it wouldn’t be so much about representing each member as it would be representing these particular films. While I love this idea, I don’t think that it’s as clear cut as that. But the beauty of art is that it can be interpreted any number of ways. I could very well be wrong, maybe they were meant to indicate specific movies, but I don’t necessarily have the same frame of reference so I was not able to read all of the potential indicators.

Before getting into my interpretation, let’s look at what we have:

Nayeon has a dark, saturated video that looks emblematic of most horror films, particularly the 2000s style with films like “Paranormal Activity”. She is holding a phone though, and this is where I agree with Kpopmap: I do think the phone is a specific reference to Scream. Scream – which came out in 1996, features an iconic scene where Drew Barrymore is being harassed on the phone by who we later find out is a serial killer. But in short, I think this is meant to show Nayeon in a general horrifying situation (obviously made Safe For Work), which in turn establishes her character as timid, fearful, or perhaps more accurately, cautious.

Mina is dressed in a schoolgirl uniform, a style emblematic of teen slice of life or romance in pop culture. Her shots are colored very softly, with light pinks and yellows and whites dominating the shots. She spends most of the video holding a card, waiting under cherry blossoms, while her friends encourage her to do something (presumably go and meet this boy, or maybe even the viewer, and confess love). This establishes Mina’s character as someone romantic and gentle.

Sana’s section is overly colorful, in all the craziest ways. Everything is saturated pink and yellow, the set pieces are patterned, and all of the girls wear colorful outfits and hold wands or other fun objects. Little animations are scattered throughout the video, mostly of objects that shouldn’t have faces with cute eyes on them – mainly musical notes. It’s very Banjo-Kazooie in that respect. As mentioned in my “Like OOH-AHH” article, Sana’s member profile establishes her as a very optimistic person – I think the magical girl style is meant to give us that personality trait.

Tzuyu, the beloved maknae, is in a sepia-toned section, with her dress being laced up by the other girls. She has an old fashioned bed with a canopy in the room, along with a vanity and paintings. Eventually she runs outside, carrying her skirt with her, and the outside is a beautiful mansion complete with a fountain. This is meant to establish Tzuyu’s character as sophisticated and formal.

Momo’s parts of the video show her in a subway, wearing all black with a green jacket and holding guns. She has Jihyo and Jeongyeon on either side of her, also holding guns, being her wingwomen. She’s in what appears to be a dilapidated New York subway (note the exit sign has the 1, 2, 3, 7, A, C, E, and S trains, all of which are metro stops – I have yet to find the station which allows you to transfer to all of them though.) I think this is meant to make Momo seem like a badass, sexy cop-type girl or secret agent. This would in turn establish a type of maturity.

Jeongyeon’s segments remind me of art films in general – you know, the kind that tend to get the Oscars. She has an apartment with tons of furniture, dangling curtains, plants, fans, art…all the things to establish a mysteriously enticing character in a film. She herself is wearing a silk shirt with pink accents and a dark patterned slip – she’s meant to be sexy in a more adult way, as opposed to Momo’s action type sexy. She also has a promise ring, which establishes her as someone’s significant other – probably yours. But it could also be she’s just wearing jewelry for the sake of wearing it. Either way, she has soft colors as well, but darker ones, making her seem like a deeper, more spiritual person.

Jihyo gets the chorus parts – she’s dancing the choreography in sporty uniforms with all of the others, and the brightness of the video makes it look like it belongs in some teen movie like High School Musical (though probably better.) There isn’t much to say here, but it does establish Jihyo as a dancer, and while her main function in the band is leader, this will come into play later.

Chaeyoung, one of the band’s two rappers, gets to be a cowgirl, but a slightly more modern one. She gets a car, she gets a gun, she gets a wanted poster, she gets a super-gold color scheme, hyper-saturated colors, and film noise put over her screen. She gets the quintessentially American setup, which is in complete contrast to the other rapper in this band.

Dahyun, the last rapper, gets the traditional Korean hanbok, fan, and palace. All of the camerawork in her scenes makes it look like she was shot for a drama. Her color scheme is mostly greens, reds, and whites, with some elements of gold, but everything is undersaturated so it doesn’t overpower anything. I think since she and Chaeyoung are the two rappers in the band, they are meant to mirror each other by being representative of two cultures.

My personal view of the video is that it is meant to use cultural iconography – some specific to a work of pop culture, some not – to show us specific personality types in their extremes as the basis of making a group. Idol groups are often constructed under the false pretenses of “you need X member to fit X personality type” in order to create something relatable. While I don’t want to be the kind of person who thinks every music video is somehow about the idol industry (just as I don’t think every movie is about capitalism) the argument can be made that art only exist because of the climate in which it’s created, and in many ways reflects that specific climate. I think that Twice’s “Cheer Up” reflects idol culture by dissecting what it means to have “the funny girl” in a group with “the sexy girl” or “the grown up girl” or “the childish girl”.

Twice is an interesting group in this respect for a number of reasons. They were made through television, so it doesn’t much matter which member fit which specific responsibility so long as they were all talented and had good chemistry. Continuing, they all come from different places: Momo is from Kyoto, Japan; Sana is from Osaka, Japan; Mina is from San Antonio, Texas and is of Japanese heritage; and Tzuyu is Taiwanese. There isn’t really much of an opening to tokenize any one member as “that foreign girl” in an industry where that happens far too often. And lastly, they all have different personalities and JYP Entertainment has always been able to bring out the best of individual personalities in its wide variety of idols without making it feel inorganic.

The video ends back in the original kitchen, except rather than having the members back to the way they were, they’re all wearing the outfits from the different genres. Tzuyu is standing as if waiting for someone asking her to dance, Mina is being shy and clutching her handbag, Nayeon is still on the floor panicking over the phone, Momo and Sana are in a gun versus magic shootout, Dahyun is fanning herself, Chaeyoung is spinning her gun and blowing it off like she’s shooting with it, and Jeongyeon is dancing around with a cup of what’s likely alcohol. But the most interesting subject for me is Jihyo, who we established earlier, functions as the dancer in this metaphor, is dancing still. In fact, she’s doing the exact same choreography, on a loop, seemingly not getting tired. This is one of the main reasons I think that the video comments on and subverts the idol industry.

The camera man scratches his head in confusion before putting one of the lenses back in front of him. He doesn’t quite know what to do with all these girls and their varied personalities. I think ultimately though, that’s okay. There’s a reason I had to stop picking biases of the groups I liked – every member has something unique about them to love. I think that the video for Cheer Up is emblematic of that – that it’s okay to be different, to not quite match up with everyone else, because when you’re in a group of your friends, it doesn’t much matter what sets you apart. All that matters is what brought you together initially.

Twice’s “Like OOH-AHH” – Cinnamon Bubblegum Part 1

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When a group becomes particularly popular in K-Pop, it’s for one of three reasons. One is that they take another group’s concept and do it (arguably) better – many boy groups tend to be offshoots of each other for this reason. The second reason is that they’re marketed really well to specific demographics. BTS’s popularity in particular largely lends itself to the brilliant marketing by Bighit Entertainment and the American label handling their US distribution, Columbia Records. But then of course there’s the third option: that the band is doing something unique, that hasn’t been done before.

Now that we have a couple of generations of K-Pop stars to look up to, not to mention a massive amount of younger groups, it’s a lot harder to find that one, unique idol that speaks to you personally. A lot of it boils down to personal preference – how you relate to the singer and the art matters just as much as what the company is trying to market. For me personally, I try to find artists that have something to say. Usually this translates either into the artist is in control of their writing or they have a spin on something we already are accustomed to. I tend to quantify that as combining different “concepts”, changing “concepts” frequently, or using their platform as a way to subvert expectations in some way. I don’t like it when groups get too comfortable in something safe – when I see a group do something challenging, that’s when I get interested.

I was regrettably a bit late to the Twice train, but I must say I’m on board now. It’s honestly hard for me to quantify what makes them unique because, like Super Junior upon their 2005 debut, they’re a bit of a perfect storm. A series of seemingly incidental things that seem to line up perfectly. Twice was formed through a TV show called Sixteen, similar to I.O.I, Wanna One, and VIXX. The nice thing about TV shows is that, while edited, they do expose an organic side to a person, particularly young artists. Often, this organic nature is revealed when the person is under pressure, for example some sort of singing challenge or test, or when people are interacting with each other in a somewhat private situation. Therefore, fans got to see the group form in real time based on relationships formed between members. This is easily one of the better ways to form a group.

Twice’s popularity has been rapidly increasing. Their most recent videos, “Fancy” and “Breakthrough”, have been doing incredibly well – “Fancy”, which came out 2 months ago as of this article’s posting, now has 143 million views, while “Breakthrough”, which came out on their Japanese channel three weeks ago, has 25 million. Their older videos, “Like OOH-AHH”, “Cheer Up”, and “Signal” all have 309 million, 342 million, and 180 million views, respectively. They’ve maintained a TV presence, they’ve been on tour in the US and abroad, they’ve done multiple commercials and had many endorsements: they are the biggest asset to JYP Entertainment overall.

If you ask me, the reason behind this success lies in Twice’s music and approach to videos and concepts. Their musical style evolves not in broad strokes, but smaller, more subtle ways. They generally maintain a bubblegum pop style, but even that is a bit unfair to the band. I’d say they have a cinnamon bubblegum pop style – that is to say, their music has a bit more kick to it. The underlying beats actually sound more like songs that would be in a boy group’s musical repertoire while the overall melody is an uplifting, sweet style quintessential to most K-Pop girl groups. It’s an interesting mix that isn’t common in K-Pop anymore – generally you either go hard and fast, or you go soft and sparkly. But why not have sparkles moving at the speed of light? That’s effectively what Twice is.

Visually their videos emulate this complicated nature in a lot of interesting ways. This article will be part of a series on Twice’s videos – specifically “Like OOH-AHH”, “Cheer Up”, and “Likey”. “Like OOH-AHH” because it’s the first music video, “Cheer Up” because it’s a perfect example of what I want to share, and “Likey” because…well I really like “Likey”. Don’t judge.

“Like OOH-AHH” has a number of different styles going on. The verses generally are fast paced pop bits mixed with slower, higher, melodic elements. Korean words are mixed with English throughout, in fact less so in the chorus than other parts of the song. The bridge is comprised of one incredibly soft and slow singing bit to recalibrate and then an incredibly fast and vibrant dance break. In layman’s terms, this song is an absolute bop.

Ironically, Twice’s “Like OOH-AHH” has a video based entirely around a duality. The video takes place in a zombie apocalypse while all of the girls are wearing girly, clean, adorably fashionable outfits and not showing any fear or sense of self preservation. Zombies have been done before in K-Pop. T-ARA’s “Lovey Dovey” featured a zombie apocalypse breaking down in a dance club with a number of references to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”; Cross Gene made an entire zombie movie called ZEDD to promote their song “Billion Dolla”. But Twice taking two entirely opposite concepts made for something surprisingly fun. Whatever your expectations are going into the MV, you have none by the end. That’s what makes it so entertaining.

Looking at the intro sequence in particular, it’s clear we’re not dealing with something normal. We see a number of zombies walking around an abandoned helicopter and what appears to be an abandoned hospital. But the colors are saturated – particularly gold and rose colors, as opposed to blue like in most zombie films. Twice’s logo is in pink. The song itself is starting happy. We know we’re not in for anything normal.

Suddenly Nayeon pops out of the bed with perfect makeup in an adorable white shirt and yellow, red, and black plaid skirt, fishnet pantyhose and wedge heels and even a choker.

So already the tone of the video is set and it’s basically about as “normal” as a 40 minute movie to promote one song. But in many ways that’s a good thing. Twice doing something so different right out of the gate set the stage for what the band would be like in the future. This theme of changing expectations is rampant throughout the first half of the video – Jihyo walking past zombies on red treadmills, Tzuyu reaching for the screen while the zombies reach ahead, cutesy dancing in a building that’s actually crumbling around them, all of which makes the girls in particular seem like they radiate all that is well in the world.

Weirdly enough, the song is about something directly opposite that. Rather than the lyrics being about a girl who is a shining beacon around people who don’t care, the girl is the one who doesn’t care, and the people around her are trying to get her to feel something. It’s about a girl who wants to fall in love but just can’t, so she needs someone to prove to her that they’re worthy so that she can open up to them. So to see a video that deliberately turns this concept on its head makes a very interesting video.

Costume-wise, this bizarre rift becomes obvious with the way the girls are dressed versus how the zombies are. All of the zombies are wearing tattered clothes, more in dark tones, whereas all of the girls wear bright, clean clothes that has no rips, whether for style or for aesthetic. The girls’ outfits are mostly reds, pinks, blacks, and whites, in a variety of styles to bring out the character/personality of each member. The leader, Jihyo, wears athletic wear while Tzuyu, the youngest, wears a schoolgirl uniform. Sana dresses like a cheerleader while Momo dresses in tighter, more mature clothes. Each member has a particular way of dressing to make sure you can immediately know them.

There are also moments throughout the video that allow you to immediately remember the members. We see Mina and Momo doing stretches like trained ballet dancers while Sana struggles to get her foot up but tries to impress whoever the viewer is. This scene on its own establishes Sana as a funny optimistic person – aligned with her reputation in the K-Pop community and online profiles — and Mina and Momo as the trained dancers they are (Mina trained as a ballerina for 11 years and Momo was brought back after elimination during Sixteen because of her superior dancing ability.) That one moment in the video lets us into what kind of people we’re dealing with, both on screen and in real life.

As the video progresses, the girls dance in front of zombies in a small cement lot and inside a school bus while the zombies slowly descend upon them. This eventually turns into dancing with the zombies, who then dance with them – at first in a spastic way, but then in a more fluid way. The girls don’t care at all about the zombies being undead and have fun with each other, ultimately this leads to the zombies becoming human, as we see in the tail end of the video.

“Like OOH-AHH” is a surprisingly exciting video, with a lot of twists right from the first few seconds. Twice ultimately tapped into something that K-Pop has lacked in many respects – combining concepts and subversion of the typical tropes associated with idols. While they’re still very much a popular group, with accolades and endorsements to boot, they have an angle that’s been missing from K-Pop for a while. They’re aware that they’re popular but they also have a level of risk-taking that very few groups have had in the past fifteen years. I think what we need to keep looking for in the future with Twice is if this is maintained – but as we’ll see with “Cheer Up” next time, cinnamon bubblegum pop is definitely very much a successful endeavor.