Star Sparkle Blog

Today's video is Dance The Night by British/Albanian  singer Dua Lipa . It's her latest single and is from the upcoming live action  Barbie film  starring Australian actress Margot Robbie  as the iconic doll/character ! It also stars Ryan Gosling as Barbie's boyfriend Ken.  Side note : I still think of Margot as Donna in the Australian soap Neighbours , lol. I was sad to see it end last summer, but it's now coming back  and will be on Amazon Freevee in the autumn/winter! Dance The Night is  the lead single from Barbie The Album, which is set to be released alongside Barbie The Movie on 21st July. It's a dance/disco and pop song, and came out on 25th May.  Watch the trailer for Barbie The Movie here:  https://youtu.be/pBk4NYhWNMM   Dua fan? Check out this post: Video for last year's Potion with Calvin Harris and Yung Thug (plus links to other songs):  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/06/weekly-music-video_8.html

Time for another installment in my semi-regular C-pop Saturday series! This is my second one of the year. You can see the first one here:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2023/02/c-pop-saturday.html It's actually 5 years now since I started C-pop Saturday! Check out my first post here:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/04/c-pop-saturday.html CoCo Lee - PLAYBOY Chinese American singer CoCo Lee released the new single Playboy last year. I first came across it on Spotify actually, quite a while ago. CoCo doesn't release music as much there days (her last album was 2013's Illuminate) but she has brought out a few singles over the last few years.  She has had a difficult time in her personal life, with rumoured marriage problems and having leg surgery in February to correct a defect she's had since she was a child. She now has to learn how to walk again  Hopefully she is recovering well. :)  PLAYBOY is a pop/dance song and was released last November.  ...

This week's video is Double Back by American singer Coco Jones . Her full name is Courtney Michelle Jones, and she is also an actress who started singing and performing when she was a child and began her career with Disney .  In 2010 aged 12, Coco was runner up in Season 3 of Radio Disney's Next Big Thing show, which was looking for new musical artists. She also played the  role of Roxie in the 2012 Disney film Let It Shine and appeared in the Disney Channel TV shows So Random! and Good Luck Charlie .  Coco released her self-titled debut album independently in October 2010 and went on to sign with Hollywood Records . Her debut single Holla Holla was released in December 2012, followed by her debut EP Made Of in March 2013. Unfortunately she was dropped by Hollywood Records in early 2014, but went on to release the single Peppermint independently in October that year.  To date, Coco has brought out 3 more EPs- Let Me Check It (2017), H.D.W.Y (2019) and What I Didn...

In March I started a series about Asian groups.  In the first post I featured Filipina girl group KAIA. You can read that here:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2023/03/asian-groups-filipina-girl-group.html Today I'm featuring another girl band from the Philippines- 4th Impact . :) 4th Impact is a P-pop (Pinoy Pop) group made up of 4 members who are also sisters- (in order of age) Almira, Irene, Mylene and Celina Cercado. They formed the group in 2001 after being encouraged by their aunt and started out by competing in local talent shows. They also performed at festivals and appeared on TV shows in the Philippines, which included a regular slot on Sarah G Live  The group went through several name changes, (having originally called themselves after their surname) before settling on 4th Impact.  In 2008 the girls brought out an EP and went on to release their debut album The Cerrado Sisters: Unstoppable! in 2013. However, neither release sold that well. 4th Impact's...

Today's video is Inta Habibi by French singer NEJ' . She is from Toulouse and started singing when she was young, after being inspired by American singer Mary J. Blige . She moved to Paris at 18 to pursue her music career.  NEJ' released her debut album Enchantee (French for "Nice to meet you") in 2019 and the deluxe edition Enchantee (Black Edition) the following year. To date she has brought out three more albums- SOS (Chapitre 1) in 2021 and the follow-ups, SOS (Chapitre 2) and SOS (Chapitre 3), both released last year. Her singles include Petit Chat (Little Cat), Paro, Ma Colombe, Je t'a(b)ime and Inta Habibi. NEJ' started out on the French urban music scene and her current music is a mixture of French urban/American R'n'B and North African.  Inta Habibi is a an Arabic and French language song. The Arabic title translates as "You Are My Love" or something similar in English. "Habibi" is a term of endearment that means "...

The Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest  is tonight, so here is the second of my annual posts! I also wrote two "mini countdown" posts this year. Here is the first post, another round-up of my Eurovision posts  (I did the first one back in 2017): Eurovision Round-up 2:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2023/05/eurovision-round-up-2.html   I watched some of the 1st semi-final on Tuesday but not all of it, because I find that if it's more interesting if I haven't seen all the acts first. So I tend to watch the semi-final that the UK can vote in and then I catch up on the acts that didn't get through online later. This year it was the 2nd one on Thursday that we could vote in, so I watched all of that. Here are my favourites from this year's contest. :) Brunette - Future Lover (Armenia) I voted for Armenia in the 2nd semi-final. Their entry is Future Lover by Brunette .  She got through and will be competing in the final.  Brunette's real name is El...

Today's video is Like Crazy by Korean singer Jimin . His full name is Park Ji-min (or Ji-min Park in Western terms) and he is a member of star K-pop boy band BTS . Jimin released his first official solo single Promise in December 2018 (after previously having solo songs featured on BTS' EPs and albums). Since then he has released 4 more singles- Christmas Love, With You (with Ha Sung-woon , former member of boy bands Wanna One and HOTSHOT ), Set Me Free Pt. 2 and Like Crazy.  He also features on the upcoming single Angel Pt. 1 (from the new film Fast X ,  the latest in the Fast and Furious franchise ), along with JVKE , Muni Long , Kodak Black and NLE Choppa .  Like Crazy is the second single from Jimin's debut solo EP FACE. Both were released on 24th March. Set Me Free Pt. 2 was the lead single and came out on 17th March.  There are 2 versions of Like Crazy, a Korean language one and an English one. The songs both have a dancey vibe. This is the Korean version (wh...

It's Eurovision season again! It always seems to come round quickly, lol. The 67th Eurovision Song Contest will be held in the UK for the first time in 25 years!! We last won in 1997's contest, with Katrina and the Waves'Love Shine a Light  (so we hosted the following year). The UK did not actually win last year but came second with  Sam Ryder's SPACE MAN . Still, it was very different to coming bottom in 2021! The 2022 ESC was won by the  Ukraine's Kalush Orchestra with the song Stefania . However, due to the  ongoing war in Ukraine  they are unable to host this year.  The semi-finals and the final will take place in Liverpool and will be a collaboration with Ukraine.  Back in 2017, I wrote a round-up all of my previous Eurovision posts on the blog (I first started writing about Eurovision back in 2012!). You can see that here:  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/05/eurovision-round-up.html It's now been 6 years since I wrote that, so today ...

This week's video is Paradise by British DJ Collective Kings Of The Rollers and solo singer  Katy B .  Kings Of The Rollers consists of DJs Serum (Mark Gaunt), Voltage and Bladerunner (Devan Gray). They are signed to Hospital Records .  For more on Katy B visit my Top 10 Female Singers post (she is No. 10 on the list):  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2015/02/top-10-female-solo-singers.html I'm a long time Katy fan, so it's good to see her releasing something new. Her last studio album was 2016's Honey, but she brought out an EP called Peace and Offerings in November 2021. I actually didn't know about the EP, so look forward to checking it out. :) Paradise was released on 22nd March.  For more on Kings of the Rollers visit these links:  Official FB page:  https://www.facebook.com/kingsoftherollers Linktree:  https://linktr.ee/kingsoftherollers Official Instagram:  https://instagram.com/kingsoftherollers And for more Katy B check out thes...