LOUDER

The song

‘LOUDER’ is a digital single Taeyang released at noon on 10 January 2018. The album introduction on Bugs, written by YG Entertainment, states that he had been appointed an ambassador for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and released the song wishing the games well, carrying the message that everyone should shout together. The same text describes it as rock and pop joined together, with a chorus that opens out and a melodic guitar sound behind his singing, and credits the producers Teddy, R.Tee, Joe Rhee and 24 of THEBLACKLABEL, with Taeyang himself named on the words and the music. Writing on the day of release, Tamar Herman of Billboard cited the official Pyeongchang 2018 account to report that Taeyang had written and composed the song and had performed it for the first time at the Olympic Torch Relay ceremony.

Reviews

Billboard put ‘LOUDER’ at number ten on its list of the best Winter Olympic anthems, published on 1 February 2022. Jon O’Brien writes that K-pop had little room at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Pyeongchang games, and then: “But organizers did entrust one of the scene’s veterans with recording the official theme.” The same item recalls that in 2014 Taeyang had taken RISE to the highest Billboard 200 placing a South Korean solo artist had reached at that point.

After it

Billboard reported that the Olympic song had been announced the previous June but was held for the run-up to the games in South Korea, the torch relay among it. The same piece notes that the singers Jo Sumi and Insooni, Sean of Jinusean, Girl’s Day, AOA and Jung Yonghwa of CNBLUE were also named honorary ambassadors for Pyeongchang 2018. It was the first music Taeyang released in 2018, five months after his third full-length album, WHITE NIGHT.