RANDOM SIGHTS + SOUNDS

While she has spent much of her time recently working on her popular daytime television talk show, Kelly Clarkson has certainly not given up on her music career. Even on the program, the first "American Idol" winner devotes some time to allow herself an opportunity to sing with her Kellyoke segment where she puts her spin on classic songs. But Clarkson has announced that new music is on the horizon.

For her upcoming tenth studio album, "Chemistry", Clarkson dives into all of the experiences you can through in a relationship; from the blissful beginning to the devastating end. Using her own marriage and bitter divorce as inspiration, Clarkson began work on this project two years ago, writing close to sixty songs. She states that the writing was helpful for her, allowing all of the complicated emotions she was going through to be expressed, and hopes the album will be of aid for anyone who is going through challenging times. Two singles have been released, "mine" and "me" as Clarkson didn't want just one song to represent the entire album.

Clarkson will be out promoting "Chemistry" (due out on June 23rd) with a ten-night Las Vegas residency at the Bakkt Theater in Planet Hollywood from July 28th to August 19th.

When Donna Summer first emerged with "Love To Love You, Baby" back in 1975, this sexy dance ballad punctuated by erotic moans would create a cultural shift on what was acceptable to be played on pop radio. She would follow this international smash two years later with "I Feel Love", another global sensation that effectively used synthesizer loops to create a new, influential sound that helped lay down the foundation of what would later become electronic music. These tracks (which also includes the disco version of "MacArthur Park" and "Last Dance") would help Summer achieve the crown of "The Queen of Disco" but she was determined to prove she had much more to offer than just dance music. Summer would go on to amass thirty-two charting singles in the US that ranged from pop, rock and r&b, selling well over one hundred million records worldwide.

Sadly, Summer passed away in 2012 but her incredible legacy will be celebrated with a new documentary, "Love To Love You, Donna Summer" by the Oscar-winning filmmaker, Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano, one of Summer's daughters. The film takes an in-depth, personal look into Summer's life and career with photos, home-video footage (much of it never before seen) and interviews with "Love To Love You, Donna Summer" making its premiere on HBO on May 20th.

And this year's Eurovision Song Contest is over with a new winner crowned. Held in Liverpool, UK with thirty-seven countries in competition, Swedish singer, Loreen won for "Tattoo" becoming only the second contestant to win twice (she previously took the giant mic statue in 2012 for her song, "Euphoria") and giving Sweden another victory with a total of seven wins, tying Ireland. Finland's Käärijä came in second with "Cha Cha Cha" while Noa Kirel from Israel with "Unicorn" came in third. This European pop music contest is a very popular event with an estimated one hundred and eighty million viewers tuning in to watch this three-day competition.

Now Eurovision hasn't made much of an impact here in the States over its sixty-seven years, even with ABBA, Celine Dion, Julio Iglesias and Olivia Newton-John going on to great success after appearing in the contest but that has changed recently. It might have begun with the 2020 Netflix musical-comedy, "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga" with Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams which helped bring attention and create interest for this contest to American audiences, especially when the actual Eurovision had to be cancelled that year due to the COVID lockdown.