Star Sparkle Blog

This week's video is Shed My Skin by Dutch band Within Temptation and featuring Annisokay , a band from Germany. The song is about dealing with changes in life and growing as a person, even when that means leaving  behind others we love but have grown apart from. Check out the YouTube info box to read lead singer Sharon den Adel's description of the song meaning. :) Shed My Skin was released in July. Visit this post to see the music video for The Purge, another song by Within Temptation: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2021/06/weekly-music-video_16.html

Back in September 2015 I had a J-pop and K-pop themed month , where I exclusively shared Japanese and Korean music. It actually extended into October due to computer problems. It seems hard to believe that it was now 6 years ago! You can find all the posts under the label Theme of the month: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/search/label/theme%20of%20the%20month Since then, K-pop has grown in popularity and I've regularly featured Korean music (and more recently dance) on the blog. Today I'm sharing a new round-up of K-pop music and dance posts. For round-ups of K-pop posts up to February this year, visit my Asian Music Round-up post: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2021/03/asian-music-round-up.html   Music Music video for MAGNETIC by Rain and featuring Jackson Wang: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2021/03/weekly-music-video_10.html    Seori- Lovers In The Night (Korean indie music but this is an English language song): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2021/06/weekly...

Today's video is Red Lights by Australian singer RINI and featuring American rapper Wale . It's a smooth R''n'B love song about driving at night to see a love interest. The video for Red Lights premiered last month. Check out the Chopped & Skrewed official video here (premiered yesterday): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V57qjOc0LQ

This summer Ariana Grande has been doing some live Vevo performances of songs from her latest album Positions , which came out last October. Here are my favourites. :) Note: The song names are written in lower case.   positions First up, here is a live version of positions, the title track and lead single from the album, released in October. It has a nice vibe performed live, especially with the backing band.   34 + 35 Here is a live version pf 34 + 35, the second single from Positions. It was also released in October. Please note that this song is sexually explicit. :) off the table feat. The Weeknd Ariana is joined by Canadian singer The Weeknd for their song off the table. It's the second time they've worked together, having previously collaborated on the single Love Me Harder back in November 2014. (Wow, almost 7 years ago now!) Performing this live gives it an extra "dreamy" vibe!     safety net feat/. Ty Dolla $ign Finally, here is safety net which feature...

This week's music video is 730, the latest song by Guam born singer Pia Mia . It's an R'n'B song with a chilled vibe. (Still feel like I'm in need of songs with a laidback vibe !) The beat comes in strong around 1.50 minutes in. There's still no word on when Pia will release her debut album, which is a shame. She's had issues with her record labels. Hopefully she will eventually get it out! :) This is the official audio for 730 and was uploaded on 10th September.   Want more Pia? Check out these links: Visualiser and remix audio for last year's single HOT: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2020/09/weekly-music-video_23.html Video for Good Luck, her new single with British DJ and producer James Hype :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiPcCeWuKOk Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/piamia/ FB page: https://www.facebook.com/PrincessPiaMia  

Time for another C-pop Saturday post! This is a semi-regular series and the last one was in July . It's September already, the year seems to be going quite fast! Here are some (mostly) new Chinese songs. :)   BOY STORY feat. Jackson Wang- Too Busy First up is Too Busy by Chinese boyband BOY STORY and featuring Jackson Wang. BOY STORY literally is a "boy band" having been mostly preteens when they started out! There are 6 members- leader Jia Hanyu, Li Zihao, He Xinlong, Yu Zeyu, Gou Ming Rui (stage name written Mingrui) and Ren Shuyang.* The group was formed by South Korean record label JYP Entertainment (big in the K-pop world) and Chinese company Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME), starting out in September 2017 with the pre-debut The Real Project. They released their first single HOW OLD R U on 8th September that year, followed by the singles Can't Stop, JUMP UP and Handz Up in late 2015 and spring/summer 2018.  BOY STORY officially debuted a year later in Se...

Today's music video is LIT (Taekwondo ver.) by Korean boyband ONEUS . The group was formed in 2017 and 2018 through a couple of idol TV shows, but didn't make their official debut until January 2019.  There are 6 members- Ravn (real name Kim YoungJo), main vocalist Seoho (Lee Gun Min/Lee Seo Ho), Leedo (Kim Gun Hak), Keonhee (full name Lee Keon Hee), Hwanwoong (Yeo Hwanwoong) and Xion (real name Son Dong Ju).* ONEUS released their debut EP LIGHT US in January 2019, along with the lead single Twilight. To date they have brought out 4 more EPs- RAISE US (2019), FLY WITH US (2019), LIVED (2020) and BINARY CODE (2021); and the single In Is Time (2020). They released their debut studio album DEVIL this January.  The group's other songs include Valkyrie, To BE OR NOT TO BE, No diggity and BLACK MIRROR and their latest, Life is Beautiful. They also collaborated with alternative rock band ONEWE (their labelmates) on the pre-debut single Last Song in 2018. ONEUS have also rel...

I've shared quite a few dance videos in the past year or so and I thought it would be good to round them up by genre. Today I'm focusing on African dance, plus featuring a couple of new videos. :) Please note that I haven't included North African dances because I tend to listen to Arabic music that people belly dance to, and I will do a separate post on that. There are other dances though such as Kabyle dance which I may feature in future. :) African dance/Afrobeats Tutorials You can find Afro dance tutorial by Presh Okosi from Nigeria and some others in these posts: Includes a beginners' dance tutorial: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2019/04/dance-videos.html Features a tutorial for how to do 5 basic Afrobeat moves by Presh and a choreo to Rema's Dumebi by Nneka Irobuna : https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2019/07/dance-videos.html Includes another beginners' dance tutorial by IsaWelly and a video on doing basic Afro House Footwork from Presh (her channel...

This week's video is Distraction, the brand-new single by British singer Sinead Harnett . It's from her 2nd album Ready is Always Too Late which was released independently in May. Distraction is a nice, mellow R'n'B song. The video premiered yesterday (31st August).     Visit the links below to listen to the full album: https://orcd.co/readyisalwaystoolate YouTube: Ready is Always Too Late YT playlist   Want more Sinead? Check out these posts: Music video for Unconditional from her EP Chapter One: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/01/weekly-music-video.html Body audio and video: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/07/weekly-music-video_11.html Pulling Away feat. Gallant (video): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2019/09/weekly-music-video.html Be The One (Remix) feat. Col3trane (video): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2020/04/weekly-music-video_29.html