Taeyang was born on the 18th of May, 1988, in Uijeongbu, which is located in South Korea. At birth, his given name was Dong Yong-bae. He comes from a middle-class family and experienced financial problems while growing up. There isn’t much to tell concerning his family as the information is not available. At a very young age, Taeyang had to start working to support his family. This, however, did not derail him from his musical talents.
Taeyang started by listening to classical music by artistes like Franz Peter Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven at a very young age, learning to play the piano after listening to the latter. He auditioned and won the part of “mini Sean” in Jinusean’s music video A-yo, where he was introduced to and became fascinated with hip-hop music. This was his first major foray into the world of music. In order to pursue his goal of becoming a singer, Taeyang met and begged Yang Hyun-suk, the CEO of the record label YG Entertainment, to give him a chance as a singer. His pleas were granted and the record label accepted him as a trainee.
Taeyang was tasked with providing drinks to the senior artists and dance groups, as well as cleaning the studio as a trainee. He later admitted to being treated badly by the senior artists during that time and not getting any help from them. The label later paired him up with Kwon Ji-Yong, who is now popularly known by his stage name G-Dragon, as a hip-hop duo. Daesung, Seungri, and TOP then joined the group to become what we now know as BIGBANG.
Taeyang’s focus on singing was what helped the group to win fans and push them as a commercial success to their record label. Taeyang has released 8 albums both in Japanese and his native language, Korean. His first solo album, Solar was the first K-Pop music album to be sold worldwide on Apple’s music platform, iTunes. His impressive singing career has garnered him multiple awards from various organizations like the Korean Music Awards, Golden Disc Awards, and the Korea Popular Culture and Arts Award. Taeyang has also sold an estimated 10 million records.
