Star Sparkle Blog

In the past couple of years or so I've come across several Bollywood songs that have been remade and given a modern spin, so I'm featuring a few covers today. :)  Dilbar (Sirf Tum/Satyameva Jayate) Dilbar Dilbar is a song that originally featured in the 1999 romantic drama Sirf Tum (translated in English as "Only You") in English, which starred Sanjay Kapoor (brother of Anil Kapoor ), Priya Gill and Sushmita Sen . The film was also a remake, based on the 1996 Kollywood (Tamil language) movie Kadhal Kottai . The playback singer was the popular Alka Yagnik . In 2018 Dilbar (which is translates as "Beloved") was remade for the film Satyameve Jayate , with singers Neha Kakkar , Dhvani Bhanushali and Ikka . The second "Dilbar" in the title was dropped. The hit music video features Moroccan-Canadian dancer and actress Nora Fatehi , who is known for her work in Indian film industries, including Bollywood (Hindi language) and Tollywood (Telugu). Here i...

This week's video is Differences by British rapper and singer B Young . It's the title track from his debut album, released last summer and is about putting your differences aside to come together physically. Basically a sex song, lol. This is a visualiser which feautres B Young in the back of a taxi and the lyrics at the bottom of the screen. It came out on 30th March. Please note that the song is explicit. :)   For more from Differences check out this post: Video for So Distant feat. Tayc; I linked to a couple more videos (also features music from BANKS): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/02/new-music-b-young-and-banks.html

Sorry the 2nd post is later this week; I had a bit of a stressful weekend! :)   Last week I started a series of "mini posts" related to the Eurovision Song Contest , which is coming up next month. This is in addition to my annual two Eurovision posts . You can read last week's countdown post below: Eurovision Countdown- Past Contestant Hadise: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/04/eurovision-countdown-past-contestant.html   Today I'm focusing on the American Song Contest . It's the American version of Eurovision and launched this year.  ASC premiered back on Monday 21st March on the American TV channel NBC and will run until early May. The Grand Final will be on Monday 9th May, the day before the first Eurovision semi-final. The show, which is hosted by rapper Snoop Dogg  and first season American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson , features acts from all 50 US states, plus 5 territories and from the capital Washington D.C (bringing the total to 56 entries). If you...

This week's video is Alles in mir will zu Dir by German singer Sarah Connor . She is one of my favourite female singers and I used to listen to her music a lot back in the early-mid 00s. My favourite songs of hers include The Loving Permission, Let's get Back to Bed Boy! with American singer TQ , He's Unbelievable and Bounce, and my two fave albums are Green Eyed Soul (2001) and Unbelievable (2003). Sarah started out releasing mainly English language music and then in 2015 she brought out her first album that was primarily German, Muttersprache (which translates as "Mother Tongue" in English). It was her second German No.1, following 2005's Naughty but Nice. I haven't heard much of Sarah's German music but I remember watching the video for Vincent, the lead single from her 10th studio album  Herz Kraft Werke in 2019. Alles in mir wil zu Dir was released last June and it's from the special deluxe edition of HERZ KRAFT WERKE, which came out in Septe...

Since the 66th Eurovision Song Contest is coming up in less than a month, I thought it would be fun to do a few posts counting down. I normally write a couple of Eurovision posts every year in May and I still plan to do those. However, I'm planning some shorter ones in the lead-up. :) So today I'm featuring Turkish Belgian singer Hadise (full name Hadise Açıkgöz), who entered for Turkey in 2009 with the song Dum Dum Tek  (one of my faves that year). She came 4th. You can watch her performance here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzKgojZqO5Y I first wrote an update on Hadise in 2019 and then another one last year (as part of my countdown posts featuring past contestants). You can see them at the links below: Countdown to Eurovision 2019!:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2019/05/countdown-to-eurovision-2019.html Countdown to Eurovision 2021!: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2021/05/countdown-to-eurovision-2021.html   Hadise's latest EP is  Aşka Kapandım ...

Today's video (or audio) is up at night (written in lower case) by American singer Kehlani and featuring Canadian singer Justin Bieber . They previously worked together when Kehlani featured on Justin's single Get Me from his 2020 album Changes . up at night is a laidback R'n'B song about being kept up at night by thoughts of your lover. It was released on 30th March and will be on Kehlani's upcoming 3rd album Blue Water Road, due out on 29th April. Check out this Instagram post for a list of the tracks on Blue Water Road:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CcN61otJmiK/   Update 13/5/22 : There is a now a music video for the solo version of up at night:      And for more Kehlani and Justin, visit these posts: Music video for Kehlani's single FWU (2015): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2015/05/weekly-music-video.html Features RPG, Kehlani's 2019 song with 6LACK: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2019/09/6lack-link-up.html Video for Attention, Justin's latest...

American singer BANKS (real name Jillian Banks) just released her 4th album Serpentina. It came out on Friday 8th April. The album title was inspired by the word "Serpentine", which BANKS used to draw in journals when she was at school. The "a" at the end represents a feminisation of the idea of the divine feminine. She also chose Serpentina because snakes represent rebirth and shedding your skin. You can read more about Serpentina here: https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/banks-serpentina-3196028 The album consists of 13 tracks, including singles The Devil, Skinnydipped, Holding Back and I Still Love You. Serpentina is a good album, if you like BANKS' style of alternative R'n'B/electronic music, you'll probably enjoy this. :) There is a mix of upbeat song and quiet, reflective ones. There are also some new styles, such as gospel influences on Spirit which features SAMOHT and Anything 4 U is more of a dance song. My favourites are Holding Back, F**k L...

This week's video is Big Energy by Latto and Mariah Carey , and featuring DJ Khaled . Latto (also known as Big Latto) is an American rapper and her real name is Alyssa Stephens. Her original stage name was Mulatto or Miss Mulatto, which she chose because she is mixed race. "Mulatto" is a term once used for mixed black/white people (like Latto, Mariah and myself), but now tends to be considered offensive. So, she changed it due to the controversy . Latto started out by winning the first season of TV show The Rap Game in 2016 and went on to release her first mixtape Miss Mulatto in October 2016. She then got her big break with the single Bitch from Da Souf, released in January 2019 and brought out her first studio album, Queen of Da Souf in August 2020. Her other singles include the Bitch from da Souf remix with Saweetie and Trina , Muwop featuring Gucci Mane , The Biggest and her latest, Wheelie featuring 21 Savage . To date Latto has released two more mixtapes- Latto Le...

Time for the 2nd post of the year in my semi-regular C-pop Saturday series, which features Chinese pop (and sometimes R'n'B and rap). You can see the first post of 2022 here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/01/c-pop-saturday.html   Julia Wu- sunset First up is sunset (title written in lower case) by Australian born Chinese singer Julia Wu . It's an English and Chinese language song about wanting to be with a past lover and share the sunset with them. The song is from Julia's latest album 2622, which came out last year.  The first verse of sunset is Chinese (Mandarin, I think) and the rest is English.  I like how it starts out slow and chilled, and then the R'n'B beats kicks in. I'm not sure if the rap is by the American rapper 2chill , since 2Chill is also the video director. This is a visualiser video and was uploaded in November. For more songs from 2622, visit these links:  Split music video (it's often listed by the Chinese title, so if you ca...