tripleS, allegations of plagiarizing NewJeans… “Trend vs Plagiarism” debate

tripleS is a girl group with the concept of “a girl group created by fans themselves”. The debut members are decided through fans’ “gravity” votes. In particular, through a video released before their debut, the condition that “if you fail to achieve 100,000 album sales during dimension activities, you will be disbanded” was revealed, drawing attention.

Among the 24 members, the first dimension to debut is AAA (Acid Angel from Asia), which includes Kim Yoo-yeon from MBC’s “My Teenage Girl”, Kim Na-kyoung, Gong Yu-bin and Jeong Hye-rin. The debut album “ACCESS” contains AAA’s aspiration to show a different charm away from the general color shown by existing girl groups.

With “Access” scheduled to be released through online music sites at 6 PM today (Oct 28th), AAA pre-released the music video of the title song “Generation” on YouTube first. The released music video showed tripleS members getting out of school and enjoying freedom in the city center. “Generation” is a song that captures AAA’s “Acid Taste” and sings about modern girls who love selfies and SNS without putting their cell phones down wherever they go.

However, some netizens who saw this pointed out that the concept was similar to that of NewJeans. At the time of their debut, NewJeans gained great popularity for reinterpreting the mood of girl groups in the 90s in a modern way. They caught the eye with their long straight hair without dyeing, refreshing atmosphere, wide jeans and colorful styling. Retro props such as CD players and camcorders were also used in the right place for promotional activities and web entertainment shows, creating nostalgia.

And AAA also put this kind of atmosphere in their music video. The retro charm was emphasized through styling with Y2K sensibility and filming using camcorders. Of course, both NewJeans and AAA can be said to have set Newtro (New+Retro) as the main concept, but there are several other similar points, sparking suspicions.

First, the scene where they press “Like” while browsing SNS and the scene where they dance together on the subway are similar to the sequence used in the music video of “Hype Boy”, and the point choreography is similar to that of “Cookie”.

The costumes worn in the music video were also embroiled in plagiarism allegations. The suit at the end of the video did not match the song’s overall atmosphere and was similar to what NewJeans wore during “Cookie”. In addition, a netizen claimed that AAA Kim Yoo-yeon copied Danielle’s “pucca hair” in “Hype Boy”.

As such, as soon as AAA debuted, they were embroiled in plagiarism allegations, and there were also netizens who refuted this. They explained that the styling and props AAA showed in the music video were just following the trend. The choreography is one of the popular challenges on TikTok, and the sequence of pressing SNS “Like” has already appeared in a number of music videos.

Meanwhile, AAA, the first dimension of tripleS, is scheduled to start full-fledged activities starting with KBS2’s “Music Bank” on Oct 28th.

Source: Daum