Insights from TWICE's line succession networks: 2022 Update.

Get the data in Kaggle here

This is an update to a 2-part data analysis post. For a more in-depth discussion of the concepts I used here, please check out Part 1here and Part 2here

The 2-part network science analysis on my favorite kpop girl group TWICE has been one of my favorite works so far, and it brings me so much joy to learn that all of the members have recently renewed in the company again to continue creating music for us!

It’s been more a year since I posted this and I thought, I should probably renew the analysis too to give you the most updated insights!

In this blog post, I recreated the 2 interactive charts–the chord diagram and interactive network– I made before, but this time, including their Korean singles after 2020- Alcohol Free (2021), Scientist (2021) and the recently released Talk That Talk (2022).

I would also discussing the updated insights in relation to insights in the previous blog posts (pre-2021 singles) to how TWICE had changed, or remained the same, durign the most recent 2 years.

You may scroll to find the updated visualizations or use the links below to navigate:

1. Line succession chord diagram
2. Line succession networks
   

TWICE’s line succession chord diagram remains largely unchanged#

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Not much had changed in the updated chord diagram showing TWICE’s line successions (READ: Review how line succession is defined here). For this case, we are counting the succession pairs for all the Korean songs irrespective of order (undirected edges), i.e. a Jihyo -> Sana succession is deemed equivalent to a Sana -> Jihyo succession.

1. The Top 5 most frequently occurring succesion pairs are still the Top 5 we saw using pre-2021 singles

The next three are also now tied at 28 occurences:

• the subvocalists (Sana, Tzuyu) mostly during bridge and verse lines;
• main vocals (Jihyo, Jeongyeon) transition during prechorus or last chorus;
• and (Jihyo, Dahyun) that represents a chorus-rap or rap-chorus transition.

2. The Top 5 least frequently occurring succesion pairs have been observed slightly more often

The first 4 pairs in the table are occurences where Dahyun and Chaeyoung had 1st/2nd verse parts that are succeeded by main/subvocals Mina, Sana, Tzuyu, and Momo.

Transitions of the subvocals Tzuyu and Sana to and from Jeongyeon are still relatively few, with (Tzuyu, Jeongyeon) getting some more occurences in recent 2 years.

Finally, the rarest succession pair, (Sana, Jeongyeon), still hasn’t occured again since Heart Shaker (2017)!

3. Updated total and unique number of succession pairs per Korean single

The fast and catchy Heart Shaker (2017) still has the most total and unique successions pairs with 69 and 27 pairs respectively.

The newer songs, Alcohol Free (2021), Scientist (2021) and Talk That Talk (2022) had relatively fewer sucessions ay 15th, 13th and 11th place respectively. They also have a bit higher unique succession pairs than the rest of the songs.

New edges in TWICE’s ALL SONGS line succession network#

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The line succession networks above show the song’s stucture, but this time, it takes into account the order of succession by setting it up as a directed network. (READ: Review the properties of a line succession network here)

1. Changes in the ALL SONGS line succession network

To recap, the ALL SONGS network represents the top 30% most frequently occurring line succession pairs in TWICE’s Korean singles.

When we include 3 more songs from 2021-2022, the line succession frequency threshold for making it to the top 30% increased from 8 to 9 successions. This translated to 3 new edges and 3 dropped edges in the new network shown in the table below:

Those edges that were present in the pre-2021 ALL songs network but were dropped in the update were just 1 occurence fewer than the threshold. Two connect Nayeon to Dahyun and Momo, making Nayeon slightly less connected to TWICE’s rap line.

Finally (Mina -> Tzuyu) was also dropped, but interestingly, the reverse succession, (Tzuyu -> Mina) (15 occurences) stayed among the most frequent successions–an ordering choice perhaps?

2. Changes to group positions inferred using the ALL SONGS line succession network

As recap, we have discussed that the ALL SONGS network revealed TWICE member’s group positions that wasnt anywhere encoded in the data. There has been some slight changes given our new and dropped edges.

1. Subvocals/Bridge group - This group is composed of Sana, Tzuyu, and Mina, who most often sing the song’s bridges and verse lines. The (Mina -> Tzuyu) edge was dropped and was replaced by (Nayeon -> Tzuyu).

2. and 3. Main vocal/Chorus group and Prechorus group- With the new and dropped edges, the connections between power vocalists Nayeon, Jihyo and Jeongyeon rand the prechorus group Mina and Momo, are now symmetrical, as if they were one big group. The only thing that would separate the prechorus group is their proximity to the Subvocals group, while the Main Vocal/Chorus group connects to the Rap group.

3. Rap group - Lastly, the group at the far right is composed of the rappers Chaeyoung and Dahyun. If we follow the updated ALL SONGS network to simulate a TWICE song, the rap group takes over after a Jihyo line, which was a Nayeon line if we follow the pre-2021 ALL SONGS network.

3. Changes in the centrality metrics of each member

We compute the new centrality metrics of each member averaged across all songs and compare them with the pre-2021 values to check out how they changed in 2 years. (READ: Review how to interpret network centrality metrics here)

1. A decrease in betweenness centrality among most members

• From the new betweenness centrality values, we could see that Jihyo, Nayeon and Mina still has the most connective roles among the members.
• The least connective ones from pre-2021, Jeongyeon, Sana and Dahyun/Chaeyoung, still occupy the same ranks.
• Looking at the two betweenness centrality measures, Jihyo now has a more connective role than Nayeon
• Most members’s betweenness centrality masures have largely decreased while a few remained constant. This means that fewer instances where song parts done by a couple of members are consistently succeeded by a single member, which could be a reuslt of the group’s diversifying line distributions.
• Only Chaeyoung had a slight increase, which may have been due to her new verse lines.

2. Slight increase in eigenvector centrality among all members

• Recomputed eigenvector centrality values resulted into the same member metric rankings. Jihyo, Nayeon and Mina still had the most dominant roles in their songs.

• Most members showed the same or very slight increase in eigenvector centrality value, except for the Nayeon, Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung. Nayeon has increased her dominance according to this metric by 0.007. Jeongyeon, from being the least dominant, increased to 6th, and Chaeyoung, while being tied with Dahyun in last place, increased her metric value by 0.004 marks.

• Momo has the largest and only decrease in this metric, which may be a result of her receiving fewer lines in recent songs.

In summary#

We have updated our analysis of TWICE’s line succession network with the addition of the 3 most recent songs in the dataset–Alcohol Free (2021), Scientist (2021) and the recently released Talk That Talk (2022).

• Not much had changed in terms of line succession pair counts. The most frequent succession pairs retained their ranks while there were a few rank movements in the less frequent pairs.

• The updated ALL SONGS line succession network showed a more connected prechorus-main vocals group with Jihyo connecting more to the rap group and Nayeon connecting more to Tzuyu.

• There has been an overall decrease in betweenness centrality metric and slight increase in eigenvector centrality of each of the members in more recent singles, signaling the group’s trend of diversifying their line distributions.

Recommendations#

Here are some suggestions on how to improve the analysis:

• Most say that the shift in TWICE’s style occurred during Fancy (2019)- what would be the detected changes when we set the comparison threshold at this point?

• Take the analysis a step deeper and implement an audio analysis of TWICE’s vocal signatures across the years to see how they grow!

• The analysis steps are pretty robust and could most definitely be applied for a different kpop group! Which one should I try next?