TWICE have opened up about how all nine members of the group came to renew their contracts with longtime label JYP Entertainment.

It was first announced last month that all members of the K-pop girl group had renewed their exclusive contracts with JYP ahead of their expiration this fall. “TWICE, who played a crucial role in establishing JYP’s status, and JYP, which became a reliable source of support for TWICE growing to become a representative K-pop girl group, agreed based on this trust to renew the contracts with confidence in an even better future,” the label said in their statement at the time.

In NME’s new cover story and ahead of their new mini-album ‘Between 1&2’, which dropped today, the girl group opened up on the conversations they had before unanimously renewing their contracts with the company.

“It was actually decided only a few days before it was reported in the media,” revealed TWICE’s leader Jihyo. “We talked about [contract renewals] and, of course, the conversation was not the easiest. It’s related to our individual lives. It decides our individual futures.”

Although every member of TWICE understood the gravity of their decision and how it would affect their lives for the coming years, everyone agreed to remain as a group. “Of course, [the process of renewing our contracts] was difficult, and making the decision was even harder, but in the end we decided to stay together,” Jihyo added.

Elsewhere in the interview, TWICE discussed their creative evolution and growing involvement in the writing of their music. “In the beginning, a lot of the stuff that we sang was given to us, made by someone else,” said Dahyun. “As we released more albums, our involvement got bigger and bigger.” Read the cover story in full here.

‘Between 1&2’, which was led by the title track ‘Talk That Talk’, dropped today (August 26), marking the group’s first domestic comeback of 2022. It’s also the follow-up record to TWICE’s third studio album, ’Formula of Love: O+T=<3’. That record, which arrived in November 2021, was led by the title track ‘Scientist’ and also included the group’s first-ever English-language single ‘The Feels’.