And now I bounce back to the present day with a new song release. TWICE returns to the stage with their latest comeback today with the song SCIENTIST and the third studio album, Formula of Love: O+T=＜3. This is the group’s first comeback in five months, the last being Alcohol-Free. Since then, TWICE has been active in both Japan with the release of Perfect World and in the Western music scene, with their debut English single, The Feels (where at the end of the music video, they had teased this particular comeback).

Compared to the previous song I just reviewed, SCIENTIST seems to have the same issues but in the opposite places. For me, SCIENTIST‘s verses stand out. I really like the deeper tone the members had opted for with their vocals, complimenting the deeper and funky instrumentation. Even though it was brief, I also enjoyed the order in which the lines were presented to us (i.e. vocal, rap, vocal, rap) and how they flowed into one another. The pre-choruses were also quite promising and brought my hopes up for the chorus. Unfortunately, that hope didn’t come through. The chorus that we got in SCIENTIST ended up not carrying forth or building upon the elements and undertones from the verses. By no means in the chorus is terrible. It was just safe and doesn’t evoke much excitement as you would expect. Maybe SCIENTIST‘s chorus will grow on me into the future, but for now, it just felt lackluster. I also wished the English pronunciation was a bit clearer, as it felt a bit messy to me. Dahyun and Chaeyoung’s rapping part in the bridge was awesome. I actually liked the start to the final chorus with their staggered approach. It changed things up in a way that helped make the feel less repetitive and kept the song dynamic as much as it could be with a plain chorus. The dance instrumental outro we got was pretty cool as well, adding in a bit of that funky tone from earlier in the song. Overall, I would say that SCIENTIST is a good song from TWICE, even though the chorus could have been more fun and exciting.

As a bit of a science geek myself, I am pretty happy with the idea of the science concept. I liked how they tried to interlink the lyrics with the visuals as much as they can and kept it creative throughout (a big emphasis on ‘creative’ here). Their visuals were also very strong throughout the video (though I do question Dahyun’s standing hair – it looks really childish). The cutesy vibes and visuals in this music video seem to throw it back to their earlier videos (i.e. TT, Cheer Up etc.), which I thought was pretty nice given the string of mature comebacks from the group. Some of the video it was good, whereas some had some questionable/exaggerated acting which I don’t really get (or like), such as the crying in the crowd over a bit of dancing at the end of the video. It felt a bit too much. Other than that, I enjoyed the sets and the post-production.

The choreography here looks decent. While the video looked like it was cutesy and takes you back to their early days, the choreography opts for TWICE’s style nowadays (which is a bit more complicated/mature and doesn’t have that simple and repeated ‘main move’ as like their early comebacks). The best part for me has to be the dance outro we got at the very end. It was by the far the coolest part of the whole routine. I also liked how they represented the title of the album for this comeback in the second verse.

Song – 7.5/10
Music Video – 8/10
Performance – 8/10
Overall Rating – 7.8/10