Super Junior’s Kyuhyun Started Loving Music Because Of A Boy Group… But Not From K-Pop

“Was there a song you listened to that made you fall into music?”

Super Junior is one of K-Pop’s biggest boy groups so it’s surprising that it took them so long to participate in ELLE‘s popular Song Association series but at last the wait is over.

| ELLE/YouTube 

During the episode, the guys covered songs by many iconic groups including TWICEColdplay, and SHINee when prompted with the associated words. But there was one song Kyuhyun sang unprompted that stood out above the rest.

Super Junior’s “Signal” | ELLE/YouTube 

After the word “wish” was given, Leeteuk fell into his MC role and decided to ask “was there a song you listened to that made you fall into music?

| ELLE/YouTube 

There were some initial murmurs but Kyuhyun confidently replied with “The first album I ever bought was A Backstreet Boys album.”

| ELLE/YouTube 
“I Want It That Way” by The Backstreet Boys | cnn.com

This shocked Ryeowook who responded “Oh! It’s not K-Pop.”

| ELLE/YouTube 

It was the Millennium album.” Kyuhyun added confidently before Yesung unfortunately tried to join in on the nostalgia.

| ELLE/YouTube 

“Bye Bye Bye?” Yesung asked timidly before getting shut down by Leeteuk who informed him “No, that’s *NSYNC”

| ELLE/YouTube 

Kyuhyun could only look on with disappointment as he added “Eh… Yesung doesn’t know, I see.”

| ELLE/YouTube 

This is when Kyuhyun delivered an incredible impromptu performance of Backstreet Boy’s hit song “I Want It That Way”, as if to inform Yesung of the group’s glory.

| ELLE/YouTube 

The other members were impressed with Kyuhyun’s performance. Leeteuk guessed he’d practiced this before the taping and Ryeowook made note of his added harmonies.

| ELLE/YouTube 

Kyuhyun finally explained why the album and the song itself were so important to him.

I think it was in listening to this song that I started to really love music.

-Kyuhyun

| ELLE/YouTube 

No matter what the song, we’re grateful to the Backstreet Boys for getting Kyuhyun into music. We love seeing legendary boy groups support legendary boy groups across all of music! To see more from Super Junior’s game of Song Association, check out the video below:

Super Junior