What is Love?

"What is Love?" by TWICE explores the theme of youthful innocence and the curiosity surrounding the concept of romantic love. The lyrics articulate the perspective of someone who has only learned about love through fictional mediums like movies, books, and dramas. This creates an idealized and fantastical understanding of what love is, filled with sweet, cinematic expectations. The song captures the feeling of wondering if the intense emotions and perfect scenarios portrayed in media will ever become a personal reality. It's a narrative about yearning, anticipation, and the pure, un-jaded hope of experiencing a grand romance. The central question, repeated throughout, isn't just a title but the core theme: a genuine and naive inquiry into the nature of an emotion they've only observed from a distance.

The song delves into the physical and emotional reactions one might have when imagining love, such as a pounding heart and swelling hope, as if experiencing these stories firsthand. It contrasts the idealized versions of love—being sweet as candy, feeling like flying, and seeing the world as beautiful—with the singers' own inexperience. This highlights a universal aspect of growing up: learning about complex emotions through cultural products before experiencing them. The song's cheerful and bright tone perfectly matches the lyrical content, portraying this curiosity not with angst, but with joyful, wide-eyed wonder.

The narrative of the song revolves around a group of young individuals whose understanding of love is entirely shaped by media—specifically movies, books, and TV dramas. Every day, they immerse themselves in these fictional worlds and learn about romance, feeling their own hearts flutter as if the stories were their own. This second-hand experience fills them with excitement and an overwhelming sense of anticipation. A profound curiosity builds within them, making them desperate to know what real love feels like. They are filled with questions about their own future romances, wondering if the grand, cinematic moments they've witnessed on screen could ever happen to them in real life. They speculate about when this magical event might occur and what kind of person their future love will be.

The chorus is a cascade of these innocent questions, a pure expression of their desire to understand this powerful emotion. They've heard that love is supposed to be incredibly sweet, like candy, and that it can make you feel as if you're flying in the sky. They wonder about the reported side effects of love: smiling uncontrollably all day and seeing the entire world as a beautiful, vibrant place. The central, repeated question, "What is love?", encapsulates their entire quest for knowledge and experience. It's a hopeful plea, a wondering if and when this profound experience will finally come to them.

The feeling of yearning is so intense that even just imagining these romantic scenarios makes their hearts feel like they could burst. They feel completely prepared for love's arrival, actively searching for it and imagining where their destined person might be in the world at that very moment. They fantasize about the moment of meeting, imagining a dramatic, movie-like encounter where they instantly recognize their other half. The song captures the stage of life where love is a beautiful, idealized mystery, a collection of sweet tropes and hopeful daydreams learned from stories, and the burning desire to turn that fiction into a personal reality.

"What is Love?" was released on April 9, 2018, as the lead single from TWICE's fifth extended play (EP) of the same name. The song was written and composed by Park Jin-young (J.Y. Park), the founder of JYP Entertainment. This marked his second time producing a title track for the group, following "Signal" in 2017. The track was arranged by Lee Woo-min "collapsedone", who had previously worked on other TWICE hits like "Knock Knock" and "Candy Pop". JYP Entertainment stated that the song's concept is about the love that girls dream of after learning about it through media like books, movies, or dramas. The album itself was a commercial success, with pre-orders exceeding 350,000 copies. A Japanese version of the song was later released on their compilation album "#Twice2" in March 2019.

"What is Love?" is characterized by a bright, energetic rhythm and a straightforward, pop-oriented structure. The song is set in the key of A♭ Major with a driving, uptempo beat that encourages dancing, a hallmark of TWICE's title tracks. The rhythm incorporates a catchy pop stomp and incorporates trap-influenced percussion, particularly in the transitions, which adds a modern texture to its otherwise bubbly, electropop feel. The song's rhythmic structure is relatively consistent, maintaining a high energy level throughout, especially in the chorus, which features a strong, memorable beat.

The rhyme scheme is typical for a K-pop song, focusing more on flow and catchiness than a strict, formal pattern. It uses simple end rhymes within its verses to create a pleasing, melodic flow. The interplay between the lyrical rhythm and the musical rhythm is tight, with key phrases often landing directly on the main beats to create the song's signature hooks. The repetitive phrasing of the chorus lines, like "I wanna know know know know," creates a rhythmic motif that is both simple and highly effective, making it easy for listeners to sing along.

Musically, "What is Love?" is a bright, upbeat electropop and bubblegum pop song built on a foundation of synth-driven sounds. It features an uptempo dance beat with elements of trap incorporated into the rhythm. Tamar Herman of Billboard noted its "retro electro-pop styling," characterized by "sparkling chimes, and staccato'd percussion over the bubblegum melody." The song structure follows a classic J.Y. Park production style, which is more streamlined compared to some of TWICE's earlier, more unpredictable hits. It employs a strong, layered shout in the intro and relies on a shimmering, catchy call-and-response in its chorus. Vocally, the song showcases TWICE's signature cute and energetic delivery style, but with a slightly more toned-down, melodic performance in the verses.

Lyrically, the song uses rhetorical questions as its central literary device (e.g., "What is love?", "When will it be? Who will it be?"). This technique emphasizes the theme of curiosity and searching. It also employs simple, sweet similes to describe the imagined feeling of love, such as "sweet as candy" (사탕처럼 달콤하다는데), which makes the abstract concept more tangible for the narrator. The narrative voice is consistently one of innocent, collective yearning, fitting the group's image at the time.

"What is Love?" was a significant commercial and cultural success for TWICE, solidifying their status as one of the top K-pop girl groups. Upon its release on April 9, 2018, the song debuted at the top of South Korea's Gaon Digital Chart and Billboard Korea's K-pop Hot 100. It became the first girl group song to enter the Melon chart at No. 1 following a chart reform in 2017. The song earned TWICE the prestigious "Song of the Year" award at the 2018 Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA), their third consecutive win in that category. It also won "Song of the Month (April)" at the Gaon Chart Music Awards.

The music video, famous for its creative and playful parodies of iconic romantic films, became a massive viral hit. As of July 2024, the music video has surpassed 800 million views on YouTube, making it the group's first to reach this milestone. The video's concept of recreating scenes from movies like Pulp Fiction, La La Land, and The Princess Diaries was widely praised for its cleverness and entertainment value, contributing significantly to the song's global reach. The song and its iconic question mark hand gesture choreography remain one of the most recognizable and beloved works in TWICE's extensive discography, often cited as a quintessential example of their bright and colorful pop sound.

The primary symbolism in "What is Love?" is the use of movies and books as a stand-in for real-life experience. This isn't just a lyrical theme but is visually represented in the music video, where the members reenact scenes from famous romantic films. These cinematic references serve as metaphors for the idealized, and often unrealistic, expectations of love that people form from consuming media. Each film parody represents a different facet or fantasy of romance:

• The Princess Diaries: Symbolizes the dream of a transformative love that elevates one's life.
• Ghost: Represents a deep, intimate, and spiritual connection.
• La La Land: Captures the bittersweet, dreamy, and dance-like nature of a passionate romance.
• Romeo + Juliet: Symbolizes forbidden, love-at-first-sight intensity.
• Pulp Fiction: Represents a cool, edgy, and unconventionally fun side of a relationship.
• Love Letter: Evokes feelings of nostalgic, fated, and sentimental love.
• Léon: The Professional: Portrays an unconventional, protective, and deeply bonded relationship.
• La Boum: Represents the classic, innocent discovery of first love at a party.

The act of the members fighting over the remote control in the music video symbolizes how individuals have different perceptions and desires when it comes to love, each drawn to a different narrative or fantasy. Ultimately, the song uses these cultural touchstones to explore the gap between the polished, scripted love of fiction and the unknown reality of the emotion.

The most prominent recurring motif in "What is Love?" is the central question itself, "What is love?", which appears in the intro and serves as the climactic point of each chorus. Its repetition reinforces the song's main theme of innocent curiosity and the search for understanding romance. This phrase acts as both the lyrical and emotional anchor of the track.

Another key recurring phrase is "I wanna know," which prefaces a series of questions in the chorus about what love feels like (e.g., "I wanna know, how it could be as sweet as candy?", "I wanna know, how it's like flying in the sky?"). This repetition builds a sense of yearning and highlights the gap between second-hand knowledge and personal experience. The phrase "know know know know" is a catchy, stuttering hook that enhances the song's memorability.

The motif of learning about love through media ("Everyday, through movies, books, or dramas I feel what love is") is established in the first verse and provides the entire conceptual framework for the song and its music video. This idea is the foundation upon which all the lyrical questions and visual gags are built.