TWICE

TWICE

Have you heard of the group TWICE?  If not, it’s probably because you’re not a 12-year-old girl. I am joking, kind of.  They are a girl group who are racking up some pretty big hits.  When I say they’re a girl group, I mean, there are nine members.  Their hits?  If you haven’t heard them yet include “Signal”, “Likey”, and “What is Love?”.  That said, their popularity is likely to grow with their song “Dance the Night Away”.  Why?  Well, it oozes K-Pop.  And, the video was released yesterday and has already gone viral.

What is appealing about the video?  If you’re not into K-Pop, then the answer is not much.  But there are many people out there who do love the video and here is why:  TWICE gets stranded on a tropical island and immediately start working on building a shelter and collecting food.  After they finish taking care of the essential stuff, the ladies take advantage of the stunning location and then throw a beach party.  Choreography is key in K-Pop videos and it reminds me a bit of the Mickey Mouse Club circa Annette Funicello.  This is definitely a throw-back reference to a time long before me.  That said, this is what it reminds me of.

I’m going to get a lot of flack for saying this, but when it comes to female performers/musicians/artists etc., there aren’t many that form groups.  Destiny’s Child, TLC, the Spice Girls and Xscape to name a few.  I’m not saying that they don’t exist at all, but I think that maybe part of the appeal about TWICE is the fact that they are an all female group.  To illustrate my point, the video was released on July 9th, and by July 10th at approximately noon eastern time, the music video had already achieved 20,387,875 views on YouTube.  This particular statistic far exceeds the group’s previous record of 12,576,820 views in 24 hours for “What is Love?”

What makes them so popular?  While I’m not a huge fan of the genre, their songs aren’t bad.  Nor are they great.  Is it because there are so many people in the group, and people are in awe of how they do it?  Or is it because they make sure that every person in the group is somehow involved in the music?  I also wonder if they’re just coming at a good time.  Yes, I know they’ve been around for a couple of years, but this is the time for the next wave of feminism.  More specifically known as the “fourth wave of feminism”.  And, if we want to get technical, its defined by technology.

Now I’m not going to make the correlation that TWICE is taking over YouTube because they’re particularly feminist.  But I do think that society is looking at women in a different way.  I am well aware that there have been a lot of women performers to come before them, but outside of the groups I’ve listed above, how many girl groups have we seen recently?  Women are often portrayed as not being able to get along, and getting into constant fights when there is a group of them.  This challenges that idea, so perhaps the world is finally changing.  Even if it’s in a small way, like getting on board with a K-Pop group known as TWICE.