Song Review:: Super Junior 83z: Promise- Promise {Debut}

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  • Release date: 2026 July 13
  • Album tracklist: Promise, SOLOVE, Bad Name (sung by Leeteuk), GODOGNAM (sung by Heechul), ONSAGMIRO, More Than Love
  • Album runtime: 21 minutes

 I love it when yearlings get their own subunits (looking at you, 90TAN). This one, I think, has been at least a decade in the making, although to be fair, I'm not super familiar with Super Junior dynamics other than their rather infamous fights they used to have back in the day. Still, I'm excited about this one and very curious to see what these two will give us. I'm always curious when the second gen idols do something.

The instrumental sounds like either a children's nature show theme song or a really cheesy sitcom theme song from the 70s or 80s. It's fitting considering they're doing their subunit because they're the same age and they were born during the 80s, but it's just kind of amusing. The brightness of this instrumental is almost blinding in the most summery lemon-yellow kind of way. This is high energy, but even with some rather sick guitar shredding, it's never even approaching aggressive other than with how bright and cheerful the song is. Which it is. And we've got a near a cappella section complete with one of my favorite things to have show up, which is audience participation clapping. The only thing that really keeps it from being properly a cappella there is the drums hidden behind the clapping, which is actually ingenious from a performance standpoint because that can keep the audience on beat.

I wasn't expecting them to sing all the way through the song. I was expecting at least a little rapping from Heechul if I had to pick a member to get rapping from, but this song does not give us that. Instead, we get three minutes of vibrato-filled second gen singing. Almost every line in here has at least a touch of vibrato, and some more than others. If you've been around before, you know me. If you're new here, welcome, and I absolutely adore hearing vibratos (because I don't have one myself) and actively look for them with almost every single song I review. I love them, and I'm going to tell y'all right now that this is already going into my playlist for the end of the year. It's so pretty. I'm not understanding a whole lot of it, but what I am understanding is making me get just so soft.

Putting the (does math) over forty-three-year-olds in school uniforms is kind of a brilliant choice because it's possible that these two have been together since they were in high school, which adds up to more than half of their lives together. And I love the storyline here, because it's showing that no matter where they end up, no matter if they drift a little bit apart, as is natural, they've got a bond that will pull them back together. And also, I spy with my little eye another SuJu member lurking in the music video credits as director.

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