Star Sparkle Blog

I'm working on my annual Best Of post featuring the best of Star Sparkle Blog from this year. However, I won't be able to finish it before the end of the year, so I'm doing a post sharing my favourite songs from 2022 instead. I have an occasional feature called Current Favourite Songs and my last one was in February. You can see that here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/02/current-favourite-songs.html They aren't always new songs though, just what I'm currently listening to. So here are my favourite songs from this year! :)     Sinead Harnett- Let Go Back in January, British singer Sinead Harnett released the single Let Go, which was from the deluxe version of her 2nd album studio Ready is Always Too Late. I featured it as a Weekly Music Video in February: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/02/weekly-music-video_23.html BANKS- Holding Back In April American singer BANKS released her 3rd album Serpentina . My favourite song from it is Holding Back, which

Hope everyone had a good Christmas! Or if you celebrated another festival, I hope you enjoyed that one. :) Sorry there was no 2nd post last week, I'd been working on another Christmas music one but didn't manage to get it finished. I'll probably save it for next year! Today's video is Diamonds Only by Chinese group WayV , the first Chinese sub-unit of Korean boy band NCT . It's a song from their brand-new 4th mini album Phantom, which was just released today (28th December)! The Diamonds Only video was uploaded on 22nd December. Also check out the video for the title track Phantom, which premiered today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1NuPFnuvEc Listen to and download Phantom (the mini album) at this link:  https://wayv.lnk.to/Phantom   Visit this C-pop Saturday post for Miracle, WayV's single from a year ago: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/01/c-pop-saturday.html   P.S. For more WayV and other Asian boy bands, check out these posts: Asian Boy Bands- Pa

It's only 4 (!!) days till Christmas, so today's video is festive themed! :) This is Christmas Time Again by American singer Ashanti . It's from Ashanti's Christmas, her 3rd studio and 1st Christmas album, which was released back in November 2003. It features a mix of classic Christmas covers and new (at the time) tracks co-written by Ashanti. She also released an holiday EP in December 2013, called A Wonderful Christmas with Ashanti. Christmas Time Again is an original song with a mellow R'n'B vibe. This is the visualiser. While the song isn't new, the video was uploaded to YouTube on 26th November.   Visit this YouTube playlist to listen to more songs from Ashanti's Christmas (plus watch a medley video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz8xxwKkN3g&list=OLAK5uy_mCGuY-WMnrbwE6fsyFP17Mg2rUVyDF_h0

It's just over a week till Christmas (the time seems to have gone quickly again!), so today's post is festive themed! Back in 2017 I wrote a post called K-pop Christmas! It wasn't actually about Christmas themed K-pop songs, just sharing the Korean music posts from that year (similar to 2015's Bollywood Boxing Day! ). You can read it here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/12/k-pop-christmas.html However, since then I have featured several K-pop Christmas songs on the blog, so that's what I'm sharing today. Plus, a brand-new song! :)     GOT7- Miracle   In my 2018 Christmas Music post I featured Korean boy band GOT7's song Miracle. It was a single from their re-released 3rd studio album Present: YOU &ME, which came out in December that year. The video is Christmas/winter themed.  Visit the post to watch it (scroll down):  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/12/christmas-music.html Or watch directly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtRtLf84I

This week's video is Pressure by Australian singer RINI . It's from his new EP Ultraviolet, which came out on 2nd December. Pressure is in RINI's usual laidback R'n'B style (good for helping you chill out! ) and the video also premiered on 2nd December.    Visit this link to listen to Ultraviolet: https://rini.lnk.to/Ultraviolet   And for more RINI check out these links: Music video for his 2020 single Out of the Blue:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2020/12/weekly-music-video_9.html Red Lights featuring American rapper Wale:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2021/09/weekly-music-video_22.html   trust with American singer thuy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w6tuJdZw0U

Back in July I did a round-up of dance video posts featured on Star Sparkle during the first half of the year. It's called Dance Videos Round-up 2022- Part 1 and you can see it here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/07/dance-videos-round-up-2022-part-1.html Now we're in December and 2022 is nearly over (seems strange that it's already this time of year!), so here is Part 2. This post features the dance video posts from the second half of the year. There are less posts in this one, so I'm sharing a few new videos too. :)  K-pop in Public- BLACKPINK Dances: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/10/k-pop-in-public-blackpink.html More J-pop in Public Dances:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/10/more-j-pop-in-public-dances.html Dance Videos (features J-pop, Bollywood and African dances):  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/11/dance-videos.html   Now for some new(ish) K-pop dance!   [KPOP IN PUBLIC CHALLENGE] BLACKPINK 'PINK VENOM'- Dance Cover by B.K

Today's video is Patek by Mr Eazi and featuring DJ Tárico and Joey B . It's a pan-African song, since Mr Eazi is Nigerian, DJ Tárico is Mozambican and Joey B is Ghanaian. Mr Eazi is the founder of Banku Music (a mixture of Nigerian and Ghanian music) and set up emPawa Africa in 2019, which is an initiative/mentorship programme to support up and coming African artists. emPawa100 Artists and finalists include Joeboy (Nigerian) ,  Bey T and Karun (both Kenyan), and Michael Magow (Tanzanian). Patek is the first song of Mr Eazi's that is part of the South African amapiano genre and it's sung in a mixture of languages, including Pidgin (maybe Ghanaian Pidgin ?) and French. It was released on 3rd December.   For more music by Mr Eazi visit these posts: Video for his 2015 single Skintight with Efya: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/11/weekly-music-video_92.html Doyin with Simi from 2019 (my favourite song of his):  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2019/09/weekly-m

This summer I wrote two posts featuring Asian boy bands and I also did a post about Filipino groups . I enjoy discovering new Asian music, and so today I'm featuring two more Asian groups that I've come across recently- a boy band from the Philippines and a girl group from Indonesia. BGYO  (Filipino) First up is BYGO . They are a 5-member Filipino boy band, formed in 2018 by the media network ABS-CBN, through the Star Hunt Academy programme. Their name stands for B ecoming the change, G oing further, Y ou and I, O riginally Filipino (the first letter of each sentence forms the initial). Their sister group is girl band BINI , who I previously featured in my Filipino Groups post ! The members are leader Gelo (real name Angelo Troy Rivera), Akira (full name Akira Morishita), JL (John Lloyd Toreliza), Mikki (Michael Claver Jr) and Nate (Nathaniel Porcalla). They are all from the Philippines apart from Nate, who is American. Akira is Japanese and Filipino, and Mikki has Chinese her