Lila Jnr Releases Video for Debut Single ‘Promise’
Tonight, Friday 1st May @ 7pm NZT, Aotearoa artist Lila Jnr releases his debut original song into the world Promise, giving his audience the video exclusively first.
Lila Jnr won goodtwin’s Noteworthy Competition in May 2025, where he was selected from 65 applicants and 5 finalists, winning a $10,000 single release + marketing campaign package through the label.
Now, almost one year on, goodtwin and Lila Jnr are set to release a debut EP together, with Promise as the first single released, with the official audio dropping 13th May.
Lila Crichton (Lila Jnr) is an award-winning vocalist, composer, and multidisciplinary performer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Working across classical, contemporary music, and theatre, he creates work grounded in Opera, RnB, Pasifika storytelling and community-led practice.
About Promsie, Lila Jnr says,
“Promise is a love song, but it’s also a song about grief.
It started from something a friend said to me about a relationship. “Nothing else matters, when the time is right, we’ll find each other again. That’s just the way it has to go”.
I remembered how that felt for myself and my past relationships and I even remember when it ended and when he said that I remember feeling too shy to shut him down but that’s instinctively what I wanted to do.
But that night I stared at my ceiling and I realised how beautiful it was. And the next day I already had a song written for him and he loved it. At first, Promise felt simple but over time, my life changed in ways I never expected and the idea got so much heavier and more meaningful.”
As an operatic tenor, he has performed principal roles with Festival Opera New Zealand and toured nationally with Chamber Music New Zealand and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. He has also headlined World of WearableArt and the Silver Scrolls.
LJ is founder of Woven Collective, and a part of the National Youth Opera Aotearoa and Oro Ata teams. His current stage work A Master of None: Brown Fala (2025) has toured nationally, and earned multiple awards in New Zealand and in the UK.
As Lila Jnr, he performs and writes commercial music internationally with artists including 9th Wonder, Aaradhna, MĀ, and Melowdownz.
There’s an electricity that follows Lila Jnr. The sense that you’re witnessing an artist moving faster than the boxes containing him. A vocalist, composer, and multidisciplinary performer, he sits in a rare space where opera meets contemporary R&B, theatre and Pasifika storytelling. The result is work that feels both deeply rooted and new.
