Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
TWICE are back after sorta taking the K-pop world by storm after releasing “Ooh-Ahh“, and as a result, the hype was real for their comeback with “Cheer Up“.
Much like “Ooh-Ahh”, the verses for “Cheer Up” were actually cleverly designed in terms of bring diversity and not being static as it builds to the hook. Unlike “Ooh-Ahh”, the hook for “Cheer Up” was loud and lively, but also flat and unmemorable. Immediately after hearing the hook, my initial thought was “hey, maybe I need to listen to it more and it’ll grow on me”, and if that’s the first impression left by a hook, it’s not the most promising sign right off the bat. The hook, much like the song in general, lacked a punch at any point that pushed it over the top.
For all the hand-wringing that people who hate TWICE do about “talent” (like it’s K-pop, guys), the vocals were predictably quite fine, rather it was the instrumental that I forgot to even think about until the bridge hit. “Cheer Up” wasn’t boring per se, with a lot of credit due to the cohesively disjointed verses, but it just felt like all the creativity was put into the build up, leaving uninspired efforts for he chorus and bridge. And that’s not even mentioning how they pronounce “cheer” like they’re hungry as fuck for at a carnival for churros.
Perhaps expectations were too high after the cheerleader concept leaked and everybody expected SNSD‘s “Oh“, but “Cheer Up” definitely wasn’t on that level.
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Fortunately, the music video was outstanding, and not just for the group’s visuals themselves. The director managed to find a rather clever way to basically allow TWICE to do cosplay throughout, having the concept start with an Instagram-esque camera filming them and then using a filter to change the group’s look and location throughout.
It was an easy way to put TWICE into a bunch of different scenarios, giving them the chance to appeal visually to just about everybody.
It’s not a deep or meaningful music video, but the execution was top notch and I enjoyed the fresh take on making what is essentially an oft-repeated “look how hot these boys/girls are” concept.
FUCK ME UP
Besides Sana, though, there was also Jungyeon hitting that shit.
Keep it real.
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While I feel like people will exaggerate how much they dislike “Cheer Up” because it’s TWICE, aside from the interesting verses, the effort of the song from the hook to the instrumental did fall flat for me. Thankfully then, at least the comeback wasn’t an entire waste, as the music video came up with a creative way to showcase the group’s visuals and TWICE will probably do fine due to that if for no other reason.
Still, if one has to rely on the visual appeal of a group to carry a comeback, then it probably wasn’t a good comeback effort to begin with, and JYP Entertainment has to do better next time around if they want their new marquee group to reach the heights they appear to desire.
