Promise

Album: Formula (2011)
Charted: 83
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • As the singer and chief songwriter for New York based group Aventura, Anthony "Romeo" Santos was a key figure in popularizing Bachata, a guitar based music that originated in the Dominican Republic. After seventeen years together, the quartet publicly confirmed it was breaking up for good in July 2011. This bilingual tune is the second single from Santos' solo debut album, Formula. The song is a duet with R&B singer Usher and was released to radio on September 2, 2011.
  • Longtime Usher collaborator Anthony Mandler directed the song's music video. The visual was a long shoot, taking 26 hours in total, but Santos learned a lot from the director. "He takes your story to another level visually," he said of Mandler to MTV News.
  • Formula debuted at #9 on the Billboard 200 in its debut week. Its 62,000 launch marked the biggest sales week of any Latin album for over four years. On the chart dated June 23, 2007, Daddy Yankee's El Cartel: the Big Boss, sold 82,000 in its first week.
  • The song was co-written and produced by Rico Love, who is responsible for penning such hits as Beyoncé's "Sweet Dreams," Kelly Rowland's "Motivation," as well as Usher's own "There Goes My Baby." However, this marked Love's first foray into bachata music. He told The Boombox: "I had just educated myself on what it was being that I live in Miami and the group Aventura is so big and the Spanish market is big in Miami. It's my first experience like that. I had worked with Shakira but, you know, we did a few ideas and nothing really surfaced. This is my first actual pairing and for the record to go #1 (in the Latin chart) is amazing."
  • Love told the story of the song to The Boombox: "I wrote the concept of the record and produced the record along with Romeo. I wrote the concept and the melody and then he translated what he was saying into Spanish. He wrote his part. He had his musicians come in and play it. It took us 15 hours to track it. That was recorded this summer."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Joan Armatrading

Joan ArmatradingSongwriter Interviews

The revered singer-songwriter talks inspiration and explains why she put a mahout in "Drop the Pilot."

American Hits With Foreign Titles

American Hits With Foreign TitlesSong Writing

What are the biggest US hits with French, Spanish (not "Rico Suave"), Italian, Scottish, Greek, and Japanese titles?

Is That Song Public Domain?

Is That Song Public Domain?Fact or Fiction

Are classic songs like "Over The Rainbow" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in the public domain?

Lita Ford

Lita FordSongwriter Interviews

Lita talks about how they wrote songs in The Runaways, and how she feels about her biggest hit being written by somebody else.

Best Band Logos

Best Band LogosSong Writing

Queen, Phish and The Stones are among our picks for the best band logos. Here are their histories and a design analysis from an expert.

Phone Booth Songs

Phone Booth SongsSong Writing

Phone booths are nearly extinct, but they provided storylines for some of the most profound songs of the pre-cell phone era.