Cheer Up (song)

Did You Know?

• The Japanese lyrics for Cheer Up were written by Yu Shimoji.
• Cheer Up was composed by Black Eyed Pilseung, the same team who wrote Twice's earlier hit Like Ooh-Ahh.
• The song accumulated 2,737,015 digital downloads and 160 million streams as of 2018.

Critical reception

Tamar Herman of Billboard described Cheer Up as an atypical K-pop girl group release that solidifies Twice's unique style through an unexpected mix of beats and genres, noting the music video reinforces the members' independent identities while the song showcases each member's individual voice, forgoing musical wholeness for eccentricity. Fuse journalists Jason Lipshutz, Tina Xu, and Jeff Benjamin on the podcast K-Stop called the song a 1990s pop throwback reminiscent of Britney Spears' ...Baby One More Time, praising its fun tone, rap break, and music video production but criticizing processed vocals and controversial lyrics that appear to encourage young women to play games with romantic partners. Billboard and Dazed included Cheer Up in their best K-pop songs of 2016 lists.

Music video

The music video for Cheer Up was directed by Kim Young-jo and Yoo Seung-woo of Naive and released on JYP Entertainment's YouTube channel on April 25, 2016. It went viral, gaining 400,000 views in thirty minutes, reaching one million views in under a day, and surpassing seven million views by April 27. In the video, members portray characters from films and TV shows: Mina as Itsuki Fujii from Love Letter, Sana as Sailor Moon, Nayeon as Sidney Prescott from Scream, Tzuyu as Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's, Jeongyeon as Faye from Chungking Express, Momo as an action heroine reminiscent of Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, Jihyo as a cheerleader from Bring It On, Chaeyoung as a cowgirl from Western films, and Dahyun as the gisaeng Hwang Jini. Group dance scenes show the members as cheerleaders at a soccer stadium and basketball stadium pep rally, and in front of a party-decorated house in casual clothing. The choreography was by Park Nam-yong and Yun Hee-so. A special video titled Twice Avengers was released on May 27 to commemorate the original reaching 35 million views, showing the members dancing in film costumes on a planet-like set. The official video surpassed 100 million views on November 17 and 200 million views on August 9, 2017, making Twice the first K-pop girl group with two music videos reaching that milestone. It topped YouTube's Most Popular Music Video in South Korea for 2016.