Preliminary Remarks
Liella firing on all cylinders this year holy moly. List counting down to #1 obviously. Additionally, I tend to make my list by referencing the CD release date rather than the song’s first debut. Usually there’s no significant delay between those points, but for the Yohane the Parhelion: Blaze in the Deepblue (2023) spinoff game this means that its tracks qualify for this year as opposed to last. Also means that AiScReam will get pushed to next year.
Honourable Mentions: What a Wonderful Dream (5yincri5e ver.), Ao to Shabon, Mahara Jamboree
Song Ranking
Good Singing and music.
Ignoring the obvious, overwhelming, unavoidable, baffling and subtly-distressing-since-this-may-never-happen-again question of why they got all the orange girls onto a group track except Chika?????? The song is catchy and it’s nice to hear so many of the main characters finally doing a crossover track like this, even managing to grab Honoka for the first time since A Song For You / Natte Shimatta in 2020.
Electro swing is a cheat genre I swear. Hard to make an electro swing song that isn’t awesome. This tracks BGM kicks up immediately and it’s fun how the vocals sorta bounce along with its ups and downs. Hasunosora don’t do it too often, but they’re very good at tracks like this. Though the subgroups have a lot of moodier songs, this kind of energy/tempo might be what defines them for me – On Your Mark, Trick & Cute and Ladybug further down the list.
With that said – here’s a more subdued, lower-energy banger. I like it.
Catchy backing and vocals.
Most of them time I find myself pruning the title track of any group album from my list for being too standard, but this one feels well done despite being otherwise generic. Perhaps a testament to how much longer these girls have been working together compared to the two newer groups.
The new Ai song is a banger as usua- that’s not Ai?? Very very big catchy.
Starts a bit shaky but then I quite like how the song progresses from the first chorus.
No particular comment, just sounds nice.
The music suits their voices well.
Catchy.
There are a lot of these softer songs this year and I’m eating all of them up.
Catchy. It’s overall a bit simple compared to the rest of the Liella tracks on this list, but catchy enough to make the cut regardless.
Nice vocals.
The soft voices coming in to mark the end of each episode was always nice (Love Live in general has some of the best ED lead-ins), and I like how it then shifts into a style you wouldn’t have expected from the opening. It has a pretty distinct sound among the Superstar EDs imo.
Fun, energetic and catchy.
Byebye all of Love Live Sunshine vibes (except actually there’s already music slated for 2025). Simple but nice. I would have loved to include the actual Finale Live songs on the list (Eikyuu Hours / Bokura no Tabi wa Owaranai) but from a musical perspective unfortunately neither really did anything for me.
One of the catchiest songs of the year.
Moody & the chorus is nice.
Brother i’m really struggling on what to even write this year, all of the upper ranks are just well-produced & well-sung with really catchy choruses. This one imo starts off sounding kinda generic – you can definitely hear that it’s the main theme of a brand-deal spinoff game, so to speak – but the music and vocals win me over by the end.
Nice light sound.
Doesn’t sound too different from Trick & Cute earlier in the list honestly, but they’ve ended up in wildly different spots. And while that line of thinking makes me evaluate whether I should lower this, I don’t want to.
The music, singing and overall concept of the song work so well.
Potentially the catchiest song of the year (sudden Crab Rave vibes at 2:23 lol). Ruby’s voice often ruins things for me but I don’t hate it here.
Very catchy. I like the different vocal pacings and weird guitar running throughout. The backing music reminds me of the Urusei Yatsura (2022) openings at times.
I know it. You already know it. Anyone who watched S3 knows this was going to be up here. Fun back and forth vocals between TomaKanoTe vs Li8lla and one of the more creative MVs in the series. With Kanon briefly leaving Liella in Superstar S3 I was hoping for her character to have been a bit more fierce with the rivalry playing off her pre-existing love of song (ie I wanted Sasuke’s ‘you’re the one I want to fight the most too’ but for school idols), so this battle of the bands duet was cool.
Lanzhu doing Lanzhu things. Awesome. Her characterisation and the seiyuu’s voice performance synergise so well, to the point she just keeps getting this far in my list and threatening the top position all on her own.
Simple straightforward banger. The bgm & vocals here are one of the easiest in this list to point to for how much more professional Love Live gets each year. Everything about this track just makes sense, and is done in a fantastic way.
Really unique sound on this one. I like the lighter flow of the vocals and music, and it’s nice to see Wien & Kanon working together in a smaller group since the main subunits denied me that opportunity. I’ve ultimately placed it here, but honestly my top 3 are so close this year, each time I listen to one of them I think about rotating the order.
Similar vibes to Pop Talking from a few years back, and a similar reaction I had when hearing it. First listen going “the vocals are neat and the music is a bop”, second listen frantically jamming it right near the top of the list. I was pretty skeptical about another release from this subunit, but the songs have been totally unlike what I expected and blown away the lingering worries I had from their earlier showings.
2024? Good year for Love Live all things considered. While I had some concerns for a while since even by August it felt like barely any music had released, a lot of good tracks had been saved for the back half of the year with the Nijigasaki movie and season 3 of Superstar.
skapbadoa 