Ezreal Still Sounds Like BAEKHYUN

Four champions, four singers

HEARTSTEEL is a virtual band Riot Games put together. League of Legends champions become the band members, and real singers take their voices. Since PARANOIA, the first single from October 2023, there had been nothing new.

Four champions lend their voices to LIVE MY LIFE: Anderson .Paak as K'Sante, BAEKHYUN as Ezreal, Connor Price as Sett and Nic D as Kayn.

BAEKHYUN was Ezreal on PARANOIA too. He said he is really excited to be collaborating with League of Legends again, and that it is great to step back into the role.

Jon Bellion wrote it and built it

The one who both wrote and produced it is Jon Bellion, a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and producer. Most of how this track sounds came out of Bellion's hands.

The message is simple: drop the self-doubt, take yourself as you are, and live loudly without apologising for it. The title says exactly that.

Maria Egan, Riot's global head of music and events, said the virtual artists give players a completely different way to experience the champions they love, reimagining them as pop stars in an alternate fantasy alongside some of the artists those players already follow.

Which means 1 a.m. here

The release time was 09:00 Pacific on September 18. Convert that and it lands at 01:00 on September 19 in Korea. The announcement runs on US time, which is where the gap comes from.

The music video went up first on the official League of Legends YouTube channel, and the track landed on the major streaming services at the same time. Sleep through it and everything is still there in the morning.

Things to do with the song on

If you have it on loop and want something for your hands, DoYouBox has a few. In DoYou Simon you watch the cartons light up, then tap the growing colour-and-sound sequence back. It leans on sound as much as colour, so music playing makes it trickier than it looks.

Type anything into LED Sign and it scrolls as a glowing dot-matrix board, Korean letters included. Drop in a line from the lyrics, photograph the screen, and it looks the part. My Texting Style Test runs eight questions to tell you whether you are an instant replier or a ghoster.