Star Sparkle Blog

American singer Ariana Grande recently released the single the boy is mine . It's from her 7th studio album eternal sunshine (as with previous releases, the album title and most of the songs are written in lower case) which came out in March. the boy is mine is the 3rd single to be released, coming after yes and? and we can't be friends (wait for your love) . It's an R'n'B track inspired by a leaked demo of a song called Fantasize, which Ariana recorded for a comedy sketch. In turn, Fantasize took inspiration from the hit 1998 single The Boy Is Mine by American singers Brandy and Monica (still a good song after all these years!). the boy is mine was released on 11th June. It's one of my favourite songs from eternal sunshine, along with true story . There's also a remix with Brandy and Monica (see below). The music video stars Ariana as a seemingly ordinary woman living in a city overrun by rats. However, she harbours a secret crush on the city's may...

Sorry the Weekly Music Video is late this week, I wasn't feeling well yesterday. :)   Today's video is bet by Filipina singer Denise Julia . It's Denise's latest single and a stand-alone one- not from her debut mini album Sweet Nothings (Chapter 1) which was released last November. bet (written in lower case) is a song in Denise's signature R'n'B style. The official audio was uploaded in April and the music video followed in May.      Denise fan? Check out these posts:  Live Performances 2024 (features a live performace of bum 2 me ): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2023/09/live-performances-2023.html Debut Denise Julia Mini Album (about Sweet Nothings):  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2023/12/debut-denise-julia-mini-album.html

Time for another dance post! Today I'm sharing some V-pop and P-pop Dance in Public videos (Vietnamese and Pinoy/Filipino dance covers performed in public).   [VPOP IN UNIVERSITY] Yeu Nam- BIGDADDY x EMILY- PHENIKKA ART CLUB First up is a dance cover of the song YÊU NẮM by real life Vietnamese celebrity couple, rapper BigDaddy and singer Emily . The single was released in February (on Valentine's Day) and I featured both the music video and the dance cut video in my V-pop Music and Dance 2023-2024 post in April: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2024/04/v-pop-music-and-dance.html The cover is performed by Phenikaa Art Club from Vietnam. I think they are a university based dance group, judging by the video title.  The video was uploaded in March. See the YouTube description box for the names of the dancers. :)       Follow Phenikaa at these links: FB fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/artclub.phenikaa TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@phenikaaartclub YouTube ...

This week's video is Maybe I by British singer Conor Maynard . It's from his 3rd studio album 11+ Hours which was released last June. 11+ Hours was Conor's first album of original music in over 10 years. After  he released his debut album Contrast back in July 2012, he brought out more singles but mainly concentrated on posting covers on YouTube (which is where he started his career). He released an album of music covers (called Covers) in August 2016. 3 singles from 11+ Hours have been released so far- If I Ever, By Your Side and Storage. Interesting info:  The new album was released through the Japanese record label Avex Trax , whose current and former artists include my fave Japanese singers Koda Kumi and Namie Amuro (now retired). I have Contrast and liked Conor's earlier music, so it's good to see him make a comeback. :) He also just announced that he's releasing a new song on 5th July. Maybe I is a  pop/dance song. It's a stand-alone single (not ...

Time for another C-pop Saturday (my semi-regular series featuring Chinese music)! It's only my second one of the year (the first was in February ). Here is a selection of Chinese songs (double videos from a couple of acts!) :) BOY STORY- Alpha First up is Alpha by Chinese boy band BOY STORY . It's from their 3rd EP JI which was released in February. Having started out in the music  industry as boys (literally a "boy band"!), the BOY STORY members are now in their late teens and early 20s (with the youngest aged 17). They officially debuted in China in 2018 and made their Korean debut in August last year, with the English version of the single ZI.P. Alpha is the title track from JI and was released on 3rd February (the same day as the EP). It's a mixture of Chinese and English lyrics, and is about the contradiction of opposites . There are also English and Korean versions of the song.  Click "Subtitles/closed captions" on YouTube for English subtitles! :...

Today's video is Bad Vibes by Benin born Nigerian singer Ayra Starr and featuring Nigerian singer Seyi Vibez . It's from Ayra's new album The Year I Turned 21. The album is the follow-up to her 2021 debut 19 & Dangerous (which featured the hit songs Rush and Bloody Samaritan) and came out on 31st May. The title relates to Ayra turning 21 during the recording of it. I think Bad Vibes is the 4th single from TYIT21 (coming after Rhythm & Blues, Commas and Santa with Jamaican record producer and singer Rvssian and Puerto Rican singer and rapper Rauw Alejandro ). She has also released  2 more songs from the album this month- Last Heartbreak Song featuring American singer Giveon and 21. Bad Vibes is about not focusing on negativity and is a mixture of English, Nigerian Pidgin and Yoruba . It was released on 10th May.    Stream/download The Year I Turned 21 here: https://ayrastarr.lnk.to/TYIT21 Or watch/listen on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...

Last September I wrote a post called Brandy Through the Years, which featured music from American singer Brandy. I ended up splitting it into two parts because it was long! You can see Part 1 here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2023/09/brandy-through-years.html Now here is Part 2! I didn't intend to take so long to do it but never mind, lol. I had several posts that I ended up making two-parters last year (such as my Timbaland Link-up ), so I'm catching up. It's actually 30 (!) years in 2024 since Brandy released her debut album (September 1994), so Part 2 coincides with that. :)   Who Is She 2 U Who Is She U was the 2nd North American single from Afrodisiac, Brandy's 4th studio album which was released in June 2004 (20 years ago this month!). It was co-written and produced by American producer Timbaland , who also worked on the album. The lead single from Afrodisiac was Talk About Our Love with Kanye West (see Part 1 ). Brandy had been going through a difficult tim...

This week's music video is Wallah Habibi from the recent Bollywood film Bade Miyan Chote Miyan . The title translates as "Big Master Little Master" in English. It's an action and sci-fi thriller about ex-soldiers Captain Firoz/Freddy (played by star actor Akshay Kumar ) and Captain Rakesh/Rocky (played by Tiger Shroff , son of veteran actor Jackie Shroff and film producer and former model and actress Ayesha Dutt ), aka Bade Miyan and Chote Miyan, who are called back to duty.  They were previously court martialled and have been labelled "psychos", but they must now team up to recover a stolen weapon and defeat a mysterious masked enemy, who wants to destroy India. The idea is that when dealing with a psychopath, even bigger psychos are needed! Freddy and Rocky are aided in their mission by Captain Misha ( Manushi Chhillar ) and IT specialist Pam ( Alaya F ). Interesting info: Both Akshay and Tiger have studied martial arts. Bade Miyan Chote Miyan was releas...

Sorry the 2nd post is later this week, I didn't manage to get it finished yesterday. :) Here is the next instalment in my Asian Groups series! Today I'm featuring Malaysian girl group DOLLA  and Filipino boy band 6ENSE. It's actually my first time sharing music from a Malaysian girl group! :) DOLLA DOLLA was formed in 2019 by Universal Music Malaysia , starting out  as a 4-piece. However, member Syasha (Noorsyasa Afiqah Shahrizal) left last month, so they are now a trio. The other members are Sabronzo (real name Wan Sabrina Wan Rusli), Tabby (full name Tabitha Ariel Lam Lianne) and Angel (Angelina Chai Ka Ying).  All the girls are from Malaysia but they have different ethnicities- Sabronzo and Syasha are Malay, Angel is Chinese and Tabby is Chinese and Japanese. (Chinese Malaysians are the second largest ethnic group in Malaysia after Malays.) The group released their debut single Dolla Make You Wanna in March 2020.  In February 2022 they brought out their first mi...