Comparisons to K-pop’s Blackpink don’t bother Dolla: Malaysian girl group say ‘we are quite different’ but that it’s a compliment all the same

Many Malaysian K-pop fans have attacked the Kuala Lumpur-based girl group for being a bad copy of Blackpink, but the group says ‘we never intended to copy them’

Dolla are one of the first mainstream M-pop bands to sing about female empowerment – ‘A big part of our goal is to let girls know that gender is no boundary’

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Dolla don’t see themselves as a copy of Blackpink – they say they are very much a Malaysian pop band. Photo: Universal Music Malaysia

Published: 2:15pm, 5 Dec 2020Updated: 9:18am, 8 Dec 2020

It can’t feel good to be accused of ripping off another music act. For Kuala Lumpur-based girl group Dolla, though, being called a clone of K-pop superstars Blackpink has turned out to be something of a career boost.

Dolla, signed by Universal Music Malaysia in 2019, are a multi-ethnic group formed by Malay girls Sabronzo and Syasya and Chinese members Tabby and Angel. “We hope that each member will translate her culture along with her own unique abilities into each song, so that Dolla proudly represents Malaysia as the melting pot that it is,” 25-year-old Sabronzo, the oldest member of the group, tells the Post.

Unlike typical K-pop refrains, Dolla’s music leans more towards global dance-pop spiced with hip-hop bursts, some reggaeton beats, and lyrics in Bahasa Malaysia – the form of Malay used as the official language in Malaysia.

Still, K-pop fans in Malaysia – the seventh most significant K-pop market in the world, according to a report titled #KpopTwitter 2020 by Twitter – are not entirely happy with Dolla. Instead of appreciating the quartet’s localised spin on the genre, many have attacked them on social media and accused them of being a bad copy of Blackpink.

“We take it as a compliment as […] Blackpink are the most famous girl group in the music industry right now,” says Syasya. “That being said, we never intended to copy them, as we also want people to know us for who we are.”