DOLLA Represents Malaysian Music Scene On Spotify’s New York Times Square Billboard

By Quinny Tan  •  22 Sep 2021 in Features

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Imagine your face being on a billboard in the middle of New York Times Square. Well, these girls don’t have to! DOLLA, a Malaysian girl group, are the latest national pride to grace Spotify’s New York Times Square Billboard.

The four girls’ appearance on the digital billboard is a part of the EQUAL campaign hosted by Spotify, which aims to foster equity for women in audio and nurture equity by highlighting female artists from all around the world.

DOLLA comprises of four young talented ladies; Sabronzo, Tabby, Syasya and Angel.

“Words just cannot express how we feel right now. This is such a huge honour for a newly formed vocal group like us and we hope we can continue to live up to the expectations of our fans,” Sabronzo said it on behalf of the group.

Founder of the group, Yoong Sin Weng and Senior A&R Representative of Universal Music Malaysia, gave JUICE some insight on how the group formed in 2019:

“It’s funny because I was actually watching an advertisement for a tech company, if I remember correctly, and I saw these girls dancing and performing. So I thought, why not form a Malaysian girl group like that?”

Yoong then went on to host auditions with over 70 applicants and narrowed down the finalists to the four beloved girls of DOLLA we know today.

He explained that main vision was to have homegrown talents that could reach success internationally, while maintaining Malaysian flavours.

 

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Yoong also commented on how the K-Pop industry doesn’t always have songs that are in English, yet they’re created a whole culture and fanbase around it, and that’s what he’s trying to bring forward with DOLLA.

“Most of the songs are in Malay and Chinese. I guess you could say we’re trying to make ‘M-Pop’ a thing, that Bahasa can also sound cool. I personally feel like it’s our responsibility to garner more Malaysian representation in international media,” he said proudly.

DOLLA debuted in 2020, releasing two songs in that year; their first single ‘DOLLA Make You Wanna’ in March 2020, which currently has over 4 million views on YouTube, as well as ‘Impikan’, accompanied by an English version, ‘Watch Me Glow’.

‘Impikan’ had a million views on YouTube in less than two weeks, and gained widespread media attention locally and internationally as well within the SEA region and Korea.

In 2021, DOLLA was nominated for ‘Best New Artist’ and ‘Best Fanclub’ in the Era Digital Music Awards. Their fans, dubbed collectively as iDOLLA, are dedicated and creative, and have been supporting the girls since their debut.

Congratulations, girls! We’ll be looking forward to their next release, coming out this Friday (24/9). Pre-save it here!