TWICE

TWICE arrived in October 2015 with the mini album THE STORY BEGINS and immediately established themselves as something singular in K-pop. Formed by JYP Entertainment through the survival competition series Sixteen, the nine-member group brought together Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Momo, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Tzuyu, with members from South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan whose complementary energies made the group feel like a genuine whole rather than an assembled collective. The international makeup of the lineup reflected both JYP's ambitions and the group's natural ability to connect across borders.

The group's rise to national prominence came in 2016 with "Cheer Up," a single that hit number one on the Gaon Digital Chart and was named the best-performing single of the year. It won Song of the Year at both the Melon Music Awards and the Mnet Asian Music Awards. Along with "TT," which followed shortly after, "Cheer Up" turned TWICE into one of the defining acts of K-pop's third generation. Those two songs together form a kind of watershed moment in the group's history: bright, kinetic, and immediately memorable, they introduced a version of TWICE that captured enormous public attention and held it.

What has made TWICE remarkable beyond that early wave is their commitment to evolution. As the members matured, so did the sound. The run from "Fancy" through "I Can't Stop Me" brought in sleeker dance-pop, disco influences, and a more sophisticated performance sensibility. TWICE also signed with Republic Records for US promotions, and their appeal outside Korea kept growing: albums including More & More, Eyes Wide Open, Taste of Love, Formula of Love, and Between 1&2 all charted on the Billboard 200.

The release of the EP Strategy in December 2024 marked another bold move, with the title track featuring Megan Thee Stallion as the group's fourth original English-language single. It was a statement of continued ambition from a group a decade into their career and still finding ways to surprise. In 2025, TWICE released "TAKEDOWN," performed by members Jeongyeon, Jihyo, and Chaeyoung for the Netflix animated film KPop Demon Hunters, before following it with the fifth Korean studio album Ten: The Story Goes On in October of that year. Released on the group's tenth anniversary since debut, the album carries the confidence of artists who know exactly who they are and what they want to say. "ME+YOU," from that record, is TWICE at their most assured: comfortable, warm, and still fully vital.

A decade in, TWICE remains one of the most compelling acts in K-pop precisely because they have never stopped working at it. "Cheer Up" and "TT" still land with the weight of shared memory for a global fanbase that has been there from the beginning, while "Strategy" and "ME+YOU" prove the catalog keeps moving forward. Few groups have managed that balance between honoring their legacy and continuing to grow it as gracefully as TWICE.