Twice’s Creation Story

Twice is probably one of the first K-pop groups I had heard about. I was completely unfamiliar with K-pop before this school year. The only group I heard about was BTS, and I only knew about this because of how prevalent their fandom was. First semester, one of my friends was raving over Blackpink’s The Album, which is where I first knew about Blackpink. This same friend had a room full of Twice posters. Another friend loves singing along to Twice songs when happy, so I thought this must be quite the group.

Twice posters in my friend’s room

When I looked up the group, the most interesting thing to me was the creation of Twice. Twice is currently composed of nine members: Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Momo, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Tzuyu. The story of how this came to be is pretty unique. JYP was planning to debut a group called 6MIX in early 2014 to match girl groups that SM and YG were also planning. 6MIX was to include Nayeon, Jeongyeon, and Jihyo who are all now in Twice. Additionally, the group included Minyoung, Cecilia, and Lena. JYP was in a struggling state at this time, so a lot was riding on the success of the group. Sadly, 6MIX’s debut kept falling apart. The Sewol Ferry tragedy happened in April 2014, which traumatized South Korea. Understandably so, JYP decided to delay the group’s debut because of the state of the country. This delay led to Cecilia leaving the group for unconfirmed reasons, but Sana was found to replace her. It then seemed as if 6MIX was ready to debut. Suddenly, there was another unknown delay. Some say it is because Lena left before Sixteen, but popular internet theories dispute this.

Initial 6MIX group

In February 2015, JYP announces that the members of the next girl group would be determined through Sixteen, a competition survival show. Their debut kept falling apart, and JYP was probably unsure about the lineup. Additionally, this would generate excitement for the new group and potentially find a 7^th member for the group. Lena was leaked to be included in the original roster for the show, but she left JYP after the announcement of the show. Tzuyu was added to the roster because of the newly vacant spot. The show ended with Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, and Chaeyoung being selected for Twice. As we can see, this does not include Momo or Tzuyu.

During the process of Sixteen, Momo was eliminated, Minyoung wasn’t performing well, and Lena, the main rapper of 6MIX, left. JYP still needed to somehow output their best possible girl group, but there were now unforeseen problems. Thankfully, Jihyo, Nayeon, and Jeonyeon were performing well in the show, and Sana was well-liked and doing decent. This gave four of the seven spots to 6MIX members. Chaeyoung was chosen as a main rapper due to Lena’s departure, but Chaeyoung was less experienced and younger than Lena. In response, JYP added fan favorite Dahyun. The last member was Mina because she kept performing insanely well and impressing everyone.

This seems like quite a strong group, but JYP was not satisfied. JYP’s best female dancer of the time was Momo. All the other girls around her age would be debuting in Twice or going solo, which meant her debut window was tight. She would probably be too old by the time another girl group was to debut. As a result, JYP used their right to change the lineup to add Momo, leaving the group with 8 members. Choreographically, it is much more difficult to deal with an even number of members, so JYP needed one more. This allowed Tzuyu, the most popular contestant at the show’s end, to be the “audience’s pick” for the group, giving us all nine of the Twice members.

After watching some of Sixteen seeing Twice videos on Youtube, it is crazy to think about how everything came to be as Twice is now one of the biggest Kpop girl groups to exist. The story behind the group’s creation is quite complicated, yet everything worked out so well in the end.