Songfacts®:

• Before forming Kiss, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons had a band called Wicked Lester that included a Hollies song called "I Wanna Shout" in their set. The chorus goes:
  
  We wanna shout it out loud
  But we can't let people know
  
  Wicked Lester recorded the song with the title "We Want To Shout It Out Loud," but their version wasn't released. A few years later, when Kiss were working on their fourth album, Destroyer, Simmons came up with a variation on the lyric, singing, "Shout it, shout it, shout it out loud." He, Stanley, and their producer, Bob Ezrin, put fleshed out the song in about 30 minutes, turning into a wild party tune that became one of Kiss' anthems.
• Simmons, Stanley and Bob Ezrin wrote the song at Ezrin's apartment in New York City with all three of them sitting at a piano. They wrote the songs for the album at their various apartments and spent a lot of time rehearsing them before heading into the studio to record. Destroyer was the first Kiss album Ezrin worked on; he was far more knowledgeable about music than the band and did a lot of teaching in their time together, even using a blackboard and pointer. Kiss had a substantial following at this point, but it was mostly young boys. They knew Ezrin could polish their sound and expand their audience, and he did: the album was a huge hit and got them to the next level.
• Simmons and Stanley trade lines on the verses and both come in on the chorus, which is just the title repeated:
  
  Shout it, shout it, shout it out loud
  Shout it, shout it, shout it out loud
• Kiss fans sometimes took some heat for their choice of music. This song assures them they're doing the right thing, with a line that lives on in Kiss lore:
  
  You got to treat yourself like number one
  Do you need to be reminded?
• This was the first of four singles released from the album, chosen because it's an upbeat, radio-friendly (running just 2:38) song with lots of attitude. It did well, going to #31 in America, but the biggest hit from the album was the last single, the ballad "Beth."
• This song draws from soul music, specifically "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" by The Four Tops.
  
  In a Songfacts interview with Paul Stanley, he explained: "You have the verse, 'Well the night's begun and you want some fun, do you think you're gonna find it, think you're gonna find it.' That answer in the background is the Four Tops! The call-and-response is something that the Four Tops did in 'Sugar Pie Honey Bunch.'"
  
  According to Peter Criss, the drum beat is also modeled on that song.