Sparkle

Sparkle may refer to:

Film and music

Sparkle (charity)

Sparkle is a charity based in the United Kingdom that is best known for organising the annual Sparkle Weekend in Manchester, which aims to celebrate the transgender community. The event claims to be the world's largest transgender event.

History

Sparkle was formed in 2005 and was granted registered charity status in 2011.

Sparkle Weekend

Sparkle Weekend usually occurs every July, with the 11th weekend celebrated in 2015., where over 10,000 people attended It is based around Manchester's Canal Street, with local bars and restaurants sponsoring and advertising the event, and various talks and workshops are ran. On the Saturday, Sackville Gardens hosts a stage and stalls.

National Transgender Awards (NTGA)

Sparkle also hosts the National Transgender Celebration to recognise the people and organisations that contribute to the trans community and help ensure trans people can enjoy their lives, careers, families and friends fully. The NTGA 2016 is held in The Palace Hotel in Manchester in March.

Push and Shove

Push and Shove is the sixth studio album by American rock band No Doubt. It was released on September 21, 2012 by Interscope Records. The album serves as a comeback album for the band as their last album, Rock Steady, was released over ten years previously. A deluxe edition of Push and Shove features acoustic versions and remixes of several tracks and "Stand and Deliver", a song No Doubt had covered in 2009.

The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 having sold 115,000 copies during its first week. "Settle Down", the first single from the album, was released in July 2012 and received mild success, debuting and peaking at number thirty-four on the Billboard Hot 100. The album's title track features producers Major Lazer and Jamaican reggae artist Busy Signal, and was released as a promotional single the following month. "Looking Hot" was released as the second single from the album.

Background and development

No Doubt released their fifth studio album, Rock Steady, in December 2001. The album sold three million copies and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. In April 2003, No Doubt went into hiatus to take a break to spend time with their families before starting to compile Everything in Time; The Singles 1992–2003, a greatest hits album featuring songs from their previous studio albums; and Boom Box, a box set compiling The Singles 1992–2003, Everything in Time, The Videos 1992–2003 and Live in the Tragic Kingdom, which would all be released on the same date. The main reason to go into hiatus was that in early 2003, lead singer Gwen Stefani started work on her 1980s-inspired new wave/dance-pop music side project, under which she released two solo albums: Love. Angel. Music. Baby. on November 22, 2004 and The Sweet Escape on December 4, 2006.

Venus (Frankie Avalon song)

"Venus" is a song written by Ed Marshall and Peter DeAngelis. The most successful and best-known recording of the track was done by Frankie Avalon and released in 1959 (see 1959 in music).

Background

Venus became Avalon's first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it spent five weeks atop the survey. The song also reached number ten on the R&B chart. The song's lyrics detail a man's plea to Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, to send him a girl to love and one who will love him as well. Billboard ranked it as the No. 4 song for 1959.

The song was covered in the United Kingdom by Dickie Valentine who spent a week at number 20 in the Singles Chart in May 1959, the week before Frankie Avalon reached the Top 20 with his original version.

In 1976, Avalon released a new disco version of "Venus". This helped revive the singer's career, as his success had been waning prior to its release and was Avalon's last Billboard Hot 100 hit. The re-recording of "Venus" peaking at number forty-six and at number one on the Easy Listening chart. Avalon was quoted describing the remake: "It was all right, but I still prefer the original."

Venus (Sirius XM)

Venus is a Sirius XM Radio station playing rhythmic pop from the 2000s through today similar to Pop2K,

Details

Venus is a Rhythmic Top 40 station with an emphasis on current-based Rhythmic Pop/Dance hits from the 2000s and today with recurrents from the 2000s, all commercial-free. The channel replaces Top 20 on 20, which officially signed off on July 16, 2014 at 12:04 AM after 14 years. The first song to be played on Venus was "My Humps" by The Black Eyed Peas. With the launch of Venus, the move will also give Sirius XM two channels with a Rhythmic-focused format, joining The Heat, whose direction favors current-based R&B/Hip-Hop hits.

With the addition of Pitbull's Globalization Radio, which was launched in 2015, Venus has shifted to Rhythmic Pop, allowing Globalization Radio to take on the current Rhythmic/Dance fare, Venus was dropped from the satellites, allowing users can still hear Venus online.

References

External Links

Tannhäuser (opera)

Tannhäuser (full title Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg / Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg Castle) is an 1845 opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on two German legends; Tannhäuser, the legendary medieval German Minnesänger and poet, and the tale of the Wartburg Song Contest. The story centers on the struggle between sacred and profane love, and redemption through love, a theme running through much of Wagner's mature work.

Composition history

Sources

Wagner wove a variety of sources into the opera narrative. According to his autobiography, he was inspired by finding the story in "a Volksbuch (popular book) about the Venusberg", which he claimed "fell into his hands", although he admits knowing of the story from the Phantasus of Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann's story, Der Kampf der Sänger (The Singer's Contest). Tieck's tale, which names the hero "Tannenhäuser", tells of the minstrel-knight's amorous adventures in the Venusberg, his travels to Rome as a Pilgrim, and his repudiation by the pope. To this Wagner added material from Hoffmann's story, from Serapions-Brüder (1819), describing a song contest at the Wartburg castle, a castle which featured prominently in Thuringian history. Heinrich Heine had provided Wagner with the inspiration for Der fliegende Holländer and Wagner again drew on Heine for Tannhäuser. In Heine's sardonic essay Elementargeister (Elemental spirits), there appears a poem about Tannhäuser and the lure of the grotto of Venus, published in 1837 in the third volume of Der Salon. Other possible sources include Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's play Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg and Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue, 1819).