Star Sparkle Blog

Today's video is Bansuri from the new Bollywood film Hum Do Hamare Do . It's a comedy about entrepreneur Dhruv (played by Rajkummar Rao ) and social media star Anya ( Kriti Sanon ), who fall in love. Kriti tell Dhruv only wants to marry a man who has a sweet family and a cute dog. There's one catch- Dhruv is an orphan. He sets out to find some "parents" to make a fake family, enabling him to marry the girl of his dreams! The movie premiered on Disney Hotstar on 29th October, just before Diwali . I've not seen it, but it looks funny. Bansuri was composed by duo Sachin-Jigar and the playback singers are Asees Kaur , IP Singh , Dev Negi and Madhubanti Bagchi . Asees and Dev also sang the new version of Deedar De , from last year's Chhalaang. The video was released on 15th October.      Find the lyrics with an English translation here:  https://lyricsraag.com/translation/bansuri-hum-do-hamare-do-kriti-sanon/ And watch the trailer here (English subtitles av

Time for a new instalment of my semi-regular series C-pop Saturday! This will probably be my last one of the year.:) Diana Wang- Make You Feel First up is Make You Feel by Dutch Chinese singer Diana Wang , a song with R'n'B vibes. It was released in August. Also check out the video for Diana's latest single Machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpdmHoTHilA Raini Yang-INDULGING Here is INDULGING by Taiwanese singer Rainie Yang , who is also an actress and TV presenter. I think her full name is Yang Chen Lin (Yang is her surname/family name) and she is from Taipei. Rainie started out in the Taiwanese girl group 4 in Love in 2000 and was given the stage name Rainie. After the group disbanded, she moved into TV hosting and acting. In September 2005 Rainie released her debut solo album My Intuition (Chinese title Ai Mei), in Manadarin. To date she has released 11 more albums, including Meeting Love (2006), Not Yet a Woman (2008), Longing For (2011), Delete Reset Grow (2019)

 This week's video is On Call by American songwriter turned singer Nija . Her full name is Nija (pronounced "Nee-zjuh", I think) Charles, she was born in New Jersey and is now based in LA. Nija started her career by writing and co-writing songs for popular artists, including Beyoncé and Jay Z's Heard About Us and Love Happy, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande's Rain On Me, Cardi B 's I Do with SZA ,  Major Lazer and Anitta's Make It Hot , Mabel's Take It Home and Jackson Wang and Internet Money's Drive You Home.  In August she launched her own singing career with the single Ease My Mind (Come Over), which combines R'n'B and drill music . It was followed by Finesse in October. She is due to release a debut project this autumn. On Call is Nija's 3rd single which came out on 12th November. This is the offiicial visualizer (or visualiser!). For more from Nija, follow her at these links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amnija_/ YouTube c

Back in August I wrote a post called Samples and Covers which featured original songs that had been sampled and the new/cover versions. You can read that here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2021/08/samples-and-covers.html Today I'm featuring a few artists who recorded the same song, or at least a very similar version. Rather than covers of older and/or well-known songs, these singers (and one group!) released the songs around the same time, covering different markets.    Mila Mila from the Tollywood film Super/by Tata Young First up is Super, a song from the Tollywood (Indian Telugu language) film Super, which was released in July 2005. The playback singer is Anushka Manchanda (who is also an actress and has sung for Bollywood and Kollywood films too). Thai singer Tata Young also recorded a mostly English version of Mila Mila which featured on her 2006 album Temperature Rising. I featured them both in a Weekly Music Video post back in 2013: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/20

This week's video is Highway by NOA. His full name is Kazama Noa (or Noa Kazama in Western terms) and he is a Japanese singer and songwriter who is trilingual  (in addition to Japanese, he speaks English and Korean). Aged 12, he was scouted by South Korean record company YG Entertainment and became their first ever Japanese trainee.  NOA made his debut with the release of digital single LIGHTS UP in January 2020. In June he brought out his 2nd digital single TAXI featuring Japanese record producer and DJ tofubeats , which was No. 1 on the Spotify viral chart in Thailand. This January he released his debut EP Too Young. His other singles include Don't Waste My Time and LET GO which features JEON WOONG of Korean group AB6IX . Highway is NOA's 3rd digital single and is Japanese language with some English lyrics. It came out on 10th October.  Find the lyrics and an English translation here: https://www.lyrical-nonsense.com/global/lyrics/noamusic/highway/   For more on NOA visit

In September I did a world dance post focusing on African dance. One of the categories I featured was Ethiopian dance. You can see that post here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2021/09/world-dance-african.html At the time I came across a couple of Ethiopian and Eritrean music videos. I thought it would be cool to share some music from those countries today. :)  Note: If you're unsure where it is, Eritrea is a country in East Africa and borders Ethiopia. Both countries are in a region called the Horn of Africa .   Yared Negu and Millen Hailu- BIRA-BIRO  First up is BIRA BIRO by Ethiopian singer Yared Negu and Eritrean singer Millen Hailu, which was released in June. I believe they are singing in Amharic and Birobiro means "Butterfly " in English.  Apologies if I'm wrong. Please let me know if you can translate the lyrics. :)     Follow Yared and Millen at the links below: Yared's official FB fan page: https://www.facebook.com/yarednegufan Official Instagram: