Songs like TWICE: 10 tracks for fans of bright, precise K-pop

Songs like TWICE share one trick that's harder than it sounds: they make relentless precision feel like a sleepover. Since the nine-member group debuted on JYP Entertainment in October 2015 with "Like Ooh-Ahh," TWICE has built hit after hit on bright hooks, playground chants and choreography that never stops smiling, even when every beat is drilled to the frame.

If you want songs like TWICE, look for three things together: a chant-ready hook built on a repeated syllable, a lyric about a crush treated as a full-body emergency, and arrangements that switch sections every eight bars without losing the sugar. That formula runs from "Cheer Up" and "TT" in 2016 to "What is Love?" in 2018. The ten tracks below cover its roots, its rivals and two newcomers from Seoul.

TWICE's early run with the producing duo Black Eyed Pilseung, who worked on "Like Ooh-Ahh," "Cheer Up" and "TT," set the template: a sing-song refrain, a rap break pitched as a playful aside, and a dance-break drop that resolves back into the chorus rather than away from it. J.Y. Park's own "What is Love?" (2018) and "Feel Special" (2019) kept the brightness but added a little ache.

The later turn matters too. "Fancy" (2019) moved TWICE toward a sleeker, more adult synth-pop palette, and "The Feels" (2021) was the group's first English-language single. Any list of artists like TWICE has to account for both modes, the candy-colored early singles and the glossier, more confident records that followed.

Songs like TWICE: 10 tracks with the same bright precision

1. Wonder Girls — "Tell Me" (2007). The JYP precedent everything else descends from: a J.Y. Park production built on an interpolation of Stacey Q's 1986 single "Two of Hearts," with a one-word hook simple enough to chant in a schoolyard.
2. Girls' Generation — "Gee" (2009). The E-Tribe-written single turned a giddy crush into a stuttering, repeated-syllable chorus, the exact device TWICE would sharpen on "TT" seven years later.
3. Apink — "NoNoNo" (2013). Softer and more melodic than TWICE, but with the same reassuring, older-sister warmth that "Cheer Up" and "Feel Special" trade on, built on a consoling lyric that tells the listener not to cry.
4. Prism Five — "Dizzy." The Seoul five-piece writes a crush as literal vertigo: tripped words, a forgotten name, a single text that turns the narrator upside down. The stuttered "d-d-dizzy" hook and the "spin me left, spin me right" bridge are pure TT-era playground chant.
5. GFRIEND — "Rough" (2016). Released the same year as "Cheer Up," it pairs sweeping string lines with famously hard-hitting synchronized choreography, proof that a cute concept can carry athletic precision underneath.
6. Red Velvet — "Russian Roulette" (2016). A bouncy, almost toy-like melody wrapped around a lyric that treats a crush as a risky game, the same sweet-with-an-edge balance TWICE found on "Fancy."
7. Prism Five — "Sugar Rush." The shortest track on the group's 2026 album GLITCH tells a whole crush in candy imagery, from a strawberry smile to caramel eyes, and builds its chorus around a clipped "su-su-su-sugar rush" chant that does the same work as TWICE's syllable hooks.
8. ITZY — "Dalla Dalla" (2019). The 2019 JYP debut swaps sweetness for swagger, but the label's DNA shows in the chant-ready title hook and the formation-first choreography TWICE made the house standard.
9. Oh My Girl — "Dolphin" (2020). A light, springy synth-pop track that sits closest to TWICE's lighter album cuts: airy group vocals, a playful hook and a mood that never tips into melodrama.
10. IVE — "Love Dive" (2022). For fans of the "Fancy" and "Feel Special" side of TWICE, this one keeps the clean hooks but moves into sleeker, more poised territory, with a self-love theme built on the Narcissus myth.

The best songs like TWICE treat a crush as an emergency and the choreography as a contract.

What artists like TWICE get right

The common thread across these ten records is the repeated-syllable hook. "Gee" stutters its title, "Tell Me" loops two words, and "TT" builds an entire chorus around a single emoticon. Prism Five's "Dizzy" and "Sugar Rush" both lean on the same device, breaking the title into stuttered fragments so the hook doubles as a crowd chant and a choreography cue.

The second thread is lyrical: the crush as physical event. TWICE's early singles describe attraction as something that happens to the body, and Prism Five's "Dizzy" does the same with sweaty palms, somersaulting butterflies and a heart "doing dominoes." The friends laughing at the narrator in its second verse is the kind of group-chat detail that made "Cheer Up" feel lived-in rather than generic.

The third thread is structure. Every track here moves through short, clearly marked sections, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, post-chorus chant, so that a nine-member or five-member lineup can hand off lines without the song losing momentum. GFRIEND's "Rough" and IVE's "Love Dive" show how far that architecture stretches, from string-heavy drama to cool, minimal poise.

Where to start

If you came to TWICE through "Cheer Up" and "TT," start with "Gee" and "Tell Me" to hear where the chant-hook idea came from, then jump to Prism Five's "Dizzy," which applies it to a 2026 crush song. If "Fancy" and "Feel Special" are your entry points, go straight to "Russian Roulette" and "Love Dive."

For a full album that works the way a TWICE mini-album does, alternating confidence anthems with crush songs, Prism Five's seventeen-track GLITCH (May 2026) is the natural next stop. "Sugar Rush" sits fifth and "Dizzy" eighth, so playing tracks five through eight in order gives you the record's sweetest run.

Key takeaways

1. Songs like TWICE combine chant-ready repeated-syllable hooks with crush lyrics told as physical sensation.
2. The template runs back through JYP's Wonder Girls and "Tell Me" (2007) and Girls' Generation's "Gee" (2009).
3. Red Velvet, GFRIEND, ITZY, Oh My Girl and IVE each carry a different side of the TWICE formula.
4. Prism Five's "Dizzy" and "Sugar Rush" from GLITCH apply the same playground-chant hook to a 2026 Seoul five-piece.

TWICE made brightness a discipline rather than a mood, and that's the real test for any song on this list. The ten records above don't just sound sweet; they're built so that every syllable lands on a step, and the sweetness survives the drilling.