TWICE fall flat musically with uninteresting “Signal”, but there was the MV at least

TWICE are back with “Signal” as they look to build even further on their exploding popularity that has essentially made them the Nation’s Girl Group. The concept sees the girls granted superpowers by an alien force, which they use to talk about trying to get a guy to like them, basically. K-pop being corny is fine as long as the song is catchy enough, but I don’t think “Signal” is up to the task.

I tried to understand this instrumental, figuring that maybe my initial impression was off and that it would get better on multiple listens, but every time it’s over I’m left with the same flat and uninterested feeling towards it. The rather annoying introduction can be chalked up to intros being intros, but the verses were also thoroughly mediocre, possessing little life throughout the track.

Funny thing is that all can be forgiven if the track is melodic as fuck and the hook of the hook song works, but the “jjirit, jjirit, jjirit, jjirit” section missed the mark. It’s honestly shocking how little of this song is catchy at all, which even if you didn’t like TWICE’s previous efforts, you had to admit there were always sections that you understood why they caught on. There’s none of that here for me, and I don’t think it’s gonna improve with time either.

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So yeah, the song itself was rough, but their music videos are always a success in the sense that they use concepts where they can have fun and look extremely attractive then proceed to make things fun and look very pretty doing it.

There were also sections that were basically designed for memes, which I have no problem with.

Still, TWICE’s best chance of something working with this comeback is basically the ‘signal’ choreography and the subsequent hearts and what not. They’ve had sections of choreo go viral before, but usually they were accompanied by at least somewhat catchy music to back it, but this time that doesn’t exist so it should be interesting to see how it pans out.

Also enjoyed the callback to this dude, though it’s a bit of an amusing inclusion given recent events.

Then they all turn into aliens at the end because we need neverending nightmares and JYP‘s mission in life is to provide us with that.

While I’ve had critical thoughts of TWICE’s releases before in a musical sense, I’ve always felt there were redeeming qualities to their tracks and have understood why many have gone viral. Well “Signal” should be a real test of their popularity level to see whether they’re actually commercially bulletproof or not, because I felt it was missing everything that has got them to this level of relevance to begin with. Honestly, if this was released by a nugu girl group, I definitely wouldn’t bother with a review.

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