Formula of Love: O+T=❤ — Conventionally Good Twice Music
2021 has been quite the busy year for K-pop veterans Twice, with numerous Japanese releases and a prior Korean release—Taste of Love—that happened to be one of the group’s finest excursions in their catalog in a good while, with an outlandish but sinfully addictive bossanova-inspired lead single packed with a healthy dose of high-caliber 80s-infused disco cuts that worked off the formula that Eyes Wide Open continuously struggled with for much of its runtime. If I Can’t Stop Me, Taste of Love’s b-sides, and the English pre-release single The Feels awakened in you an odd desire for Twice to double down on this odd but groovy nu-disco direction, the oddly titled Formula of Love: O+T=❤ will be nothing short of a success at quenching that desire. It thankfully proves that Twice still have it in them, and it’s especially joyous after the incredibly flaccid and half-baked string of releases that populated their late 2019–2020 catalog.
Now, if you’ve dipped your toes more than a smidgen into the K-pop landscape or even Twice’s own discography, all the descriptors of this album’s sonic direction are, obviously, not going to be as well-executed as other celebratory throwback pieces (that happen to be released on the same day as this album) that show more respect and study of the olden style they seek to reproduce. However, even when K-pop struggles with throwback-inspired pieces, Formula is certainly a much more learned piece than something like label-mates DAY6′s most recent Negentropy project, which also sought to recreate sounds from an era of time whose distance from its release date is comparable to the distance of that release title’s first and last words. The biggest sonic leap Twice and their producers make is that they do not scream “DERIVATIVE” nearly as loudly as the compressed instrumentation that populated Eyes Wide Open or even the aforementioned DAY6 piece.
Kicked off with the rumbly and witty Scientist, whose pre-chorus could almost fool you into a “Feel the rhythm / 몸이 기억하는 대로 좋아,” you’re provided a comparatively and technically “boring” track, but it’s made up for with the charismatic performances and irresistibly “Twice” hook. Scattered throughout the track-list are some incredibly fun tracks, like the authoritative Real You, which definitely sounds like a Future Nostalgia reject, but actually has artistic flare, unlike some other rejects handed over to Twice. Last Waltz and Rewind are slightly down-trodden in comparison to the rest of the track-list. Both call back to some trademark third-gen girl group pastiches like some of Red Velvet’s best cuts, with the former almost having a bling era flare to it and the latter carrying some elements of the mellower LOONA pre-debut singles. Candy would have been a stereotypical mellowed-out K-pop release closer if not for its positioning right before album closer The Feels, (not counting the atrocious remix of Scientist) but even so, the synth pop-skewed track is incredibly slick and sweet like candy (almost in line with some of their Japanese discography); groovy but not overstated, laid-back but not boring, sweet but incredibly palatable.
While Formula of Love is very ostensibly a more pleasant run-through than Eyes Wide Open, as much as Formula harkens back to Taste of Love’s musical palettes, it now suffers from too long/unjustified album length syndrome. Elsewhere, you can absolutely appreciate the sentiment put into Cactus’ lyricism, but in the midst of its OST-reject-esque musical landscapes, you’re left wondering if the song pricks you because of its sentiment or its overbearing melodrama. The unit tracks are more “background” than other b-sides, with Push & Pull and 1, 3, 2 providing some vocal performances that leave a bit to be desired. Hello would be begging to be an Itzy track, though Twice’s reputation in K-pop more appropriately lends them this track, as Itzy probably wouldn’t survive the retroactive embarrassment this “litty” track exudes. From an overall sonic perspective, 80% of what this album has to offer is spoilt by the third or fourth track (hell, maybe even by The Feels): it’s all mostly some pompous synths and enigmatic performances backed by groovy basslines that are mixed a little too forwardly, even by Harman 2018 frequency response standards.
However, to the average K-pop or Twice fan, however, the mentioned flaws will not detract from the overall experience nearly as much as some of the flaws of previous projects did. It’s not bottlenecked by overproduction (Feel Special), inconsistently cheesy songwriting (More & More), and derivative sluggishness (Eyes Wide Open). Formula of Love is just another showing of Twice’s perfected pop formula that seemed to fumble for a good minute. It also carries with it the highest concentration of Twice’s best material (in a single release) in a good while. Like with Taste of Love, sometimes that’s all you could ask for from Twice: a good time with uptempo, high-octane pop music that’s incredibly safe but studied and borders nowhere near offense (except Hello, maybe). Sure, it’s not wrong to “want” more out of your pop music, but you wouldn’t be looking into K-pop in the first place if that were your main objective. What Twice achieve on this album is what makes K-pop an incredibly attractive genre to many, and that’s to provide them with the feels. It’s not perfect, but it’s the brightest Twice’s (possibly short?) future has looked in a good minute—provided they don’t return to another point of stagnation and run this nu-disco formula into the ground.
RECOMMENDED TRACK/S: Scientist, Last Waltz, Rewind, Candy
2021/11/19 (2)
Originally published at https://www.tumblr.com.
