Star Sparkle Blog

Eurovision season is here once again! The 2026 Grand Final will be on Saturday 16th May. In 2026 it is the 70th Eurovision Song Contest , so a landmark year! It will be held in Vienna, Austria, after the 2025 contest was won by JJ with his song Wasted Love . The UK's entry is  LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER with Eins, Zwei, Drei .  I normally write two posts in the lead-up to Eurovision (occasionally a couple of "mini countdown" posts too). Here are my posts from last year:  Countdown to Eurovision 2025!: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2025/05/countdown-to-eurovision-2025.html   Eurovision Favourites 2025: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2025/05/eurovision-2025-favourites.html   And here is the first one of 2026! Today I'm taking a look at Eurovision spin-off contests. :)  Update 10/5/26: I've updated this post to include the Junior version of ESC! :)     American Song Contest  An American spin-off of ESC called the  American Song Con...

Sorry there wasn't a 2nd post last week, I was going through a bit of a stressful time and didn't manage to get one finished. :) This week's video is I CONDEMN by Australian singer and rapper The Kid LAROI . It was the first single from the deluxe version of his second album BEFORE I FORGET. The original album was released in January and the deluxe version came out on 24th April. It contains 9 extra tracks, including  I CONDEMN and latest single PIECES. I wasn't aware that there was a deluxe version until I saw that some new songs had appeared on Spotify! I like BEFORE I FORGET and my favourite songs from the original version are ME + YOU, JULY,  COME DOWN and RATHER BE featuring Australian rapper and singer Lithe . One of my fave songs on the deluxe version is QUIT YOU, and I also like HOLD STILL and I CONDEMN. The newest single PIECES came out on out the same day as the album. I CONDEMN was released on 17th April. As with the songs on the original BEFORE I FORGET, it...

Today's video is MURAL by American singers Swae Lee and  Jhené Aiko . Swae (one half of hip hop duo Rae Sremmurd , along with his brother Slim Jxmmi) and Jhené previously teamed up a couple of times before- first for the single/song Sativa in 2018 (from Jhené's album Trip; the single version features both Swae and Slim Jxmmi as Rae Sremmurd) and again for In The Dark back in 2021. In The Dark was from the soundtrack for the Marvel film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings .  MURAL is from Swae's debut studio album SAME DIFFERENCE, which was released on 3rd April. It's his  first official solo album (although he previously released one as part of Rae Sremmurd's triple album SR3MM in 2018). MURAL is the third single from the album, following FLAMMABLE and DON'T EVEN CALL featuring rapper  Rich The Kid (released in February and March respectively). It came out on 6th April and is a chilled hip hop song. The music video is somewhat "trippy" with Swa...

 Last month I started a mini series called New Generation Girl Groups, which features new girl groups. You can see the first post about American group GIRLSET here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2026/03/new-generation-girl-groups-girlset.html Now here is the next post in the mini series! Today I'm featuring American/global group fiveALIVE . :) fiveALIVE is a 5-member independent girl group, formed in 2023. They describe themselves as a global pop group and are also called an Asian American group because the members all have Asian heritage (Ciara is Eurasian).  The members are Jia (who is has Chinese and Vietnamese heritage), Ellie Park (Korean), Nini (Filipina/Vietnamese), Ciara (British/Filipina) and Bay (real name Bailey Park; Korean). All the girls are American and from California. They are currently based in Orange County, Southern California. Note: As mentioned in the comments on their  Kprofiles profile , I don't think that Ellie and Bailey are related, despite...

Today's music video is 2GOOD4U by Filipina singer Denise Julia . It's her latest single and was released on 11th April.  Denise's most recent mini album is Sweet Nothings (Chapter 2) which came out in November 2024. Last November she released an anniversary video for sweet nothings with popular Filipino singer Jay R , which is on the mini album. 2GOOD4U is Denise's first release of 2025. It's a chilled R'n'B song about moving on from a relationship. Denise uploaded a short visualiser to YouTube on 8th April. This is the official visualiser, which followed on the 11th. Please note that the song contains swearing. :)       Update 30/4/26: There's now an official video for the song. It premiered yesterday (29th April).   Want more Denise? Check out these links: Music video fo r bet (stand-alone single released in 2024): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2024/06/weekly-music-video_27.html Anniversary video for sweet nothings: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Yesterday was Star Sparkle's 15th birthday! I started the blog on 17th April 2011. You can see my first ever post here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2011/04/welcome-to-star-sparkle-blog.html I've previously written two birthday posts- in 2018 for the 7th "blogiversary" and in 2021 for the 10th. (I didn't mark the 5th but I had celebrated the birthday of my blog Falling Petals that year, so decided to do one here too). You can see them at the links below: 7th bday:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/04/star-sparkles-birthday-fave-posts.html 10th bday: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2021/04/star-sparkles-10th-birthday-fave-posts.html Back in 2021, I wrote that it seemed strange that I'd been blogging for 10 years. Now it's been 15 years, so even more time has gone by! Star Sparkle is my main blog about entertainment.  As I've previously said, starting it gave me the confidence to branch out into other areas and I went on to start two more bl...