This Side of Japan's Top 50 TikTok Songs of 2024
Listing the songs that defined my TikTok feed this year from Cho Tokimeki Sendenbu, NewJeans, andymori and more
Hi! Welcome to a special feature of This Side of Japan, a newsletter on Japanese music, new and old. You can check out previous issues here.
Confession: 2024 was my first full year being on TikTok, but I got on the app at a great time. For the past couple of years, stories about J-pop and TikTok revolved around the younger generation giving old songs a second life. This year, more and more new artists step out from the app onto TV to perform their respective viral songs. FRUIT ZIPPER became TV mainstays after their Best New Artist win last December, and music programs continued to book acts like Kocchi No Kento, noa, and KOMOREBI after the buzz around their songs became too big to ignore.
Occasionally, I’d catch a highlight of, like, the Shikanokonoko Koshitantan meme on a daytime new show or see comedians parody “Team Tomodachi” in their green rooms and be assured I’m watching the same popular content as others. But most of the time, I’m aghast at the algorithm bringing me the most wicked collisions of my personal interests. The other day, I came across this fan-made edit of Ano at her All Night Nippon radio show throwing hand gestures in quick succession set, somehow so in sync, to Tay-K’s “Gotta Blast.”
Sure, idols have been dancing to Project Pat a lot these days, but who thought to put these two together? But also how is it that these aesthetic clashes somehow work? The algorithms get seemingly unrelated music to be in conversation with each other as they drift along the same niche stream, or better yet, reveal that they were always in conversation with each other all along: aespa, Ken Carson and Charli XCX’s brat tracks, for one, all evoke this electroclash sleaze that colors a lot of the feed. There’s enough stylistic consistencies—distorted sonics, tampered vocals, warped tempos—to start drawing up the lines of what you can call TikTok music.
With this list, I tried to give a survey of the music diversity populating my feed, which is made of: idols, both J-pop and K-pop; clips from variety shows, J-dramas and Japanese YouTubers; and the random teen TikTokkers in between. Determining the music of TikTok in Japan, let alone a TikTok hit, is difficult when everyone’s feed provides different content by sheer design but also with no way for me to gauge how the song is spreading around socially in its home country. But I did my best using objective math: the song had be interacted by users from Japan to count, and used for more than 5,000 posts. If it was an idol song, a drama insert or a record similarly tied to some promotional angle, it had to circulate outside of its immediate circle: as much as I love ukka’s “Oshi Koi,” for instance, I didn’t see it gain impact outside of the groups from their agency, while even regular civilians were recording themselves doing the meme inspired by Da-iCE’s “I wonder.” Non-Japanese music was eligible as long as it fulfilled the above criteria.
That said, the ranking here is way more subjective. I considered the song’s popularity, both in and outside of the app. But the novelty of the song and dance went into it, too, as well as my simple love for the song or the life the song has taken after flourishing on the app. The more that its identity or its story couldn’t be easily explained without mentioning TikTok, the more deserving it was for this list.
But before we get to the main list…
Honorable Mentions
These were great Japanese songs to appear on the app, though they made the rounds more on the Western front rather than audiences in Japan, so it wasn’t eligible for a list compiling music from Japan TikTok. I still wanted to highlight them since it started a conversation about the American’s interest in Japanese music and their particular taste for them.
“Lonely in Gorgeous” by Tommy February6 [Sony, 2005]
Westerners glamorizing Japanese Y2K aesthetics are indebted to the curation of the cute and girly done by Tomoko Kawase through what I call her Tommy projects. The ‘80s nu-disco by bedroom-pop geek Tommy February6 settled into TikToks showing off blush pink tops, press-on gems and Sanrio; and the glittered punk by her alter ego Tommy Heavenly6 provided the soundtrack to prep-school rockers in heavy eyeliner. A number of her singles from both concepts were favorites, but “Lonely in Gorgeous” by the former persona in particular plays key to understand how her work fits into the musical landscape of the feed.
The disco grooves of her early releases turn gaudy in “Lonely in Gorgeous” with its brash synths more resembling the brash notes of electroclash. Fading out from the more innocent party-funk of the early ‘80s, the buzzing production carries hints of the harder electro new wave to come, and eventually repurposed in the latter half of the ‘00s into more of the goth variety or more bass-indebted. If the once-colorful beats seem disenchanted, so is Tommy, her Cinderella dreams, now sullied. While the early February6 singles depicted her more as a naive girl with childlike interests, hopelessly in love, “Lonely in Gorgeous” has her sulking in her own misery but still in her own humorous, melodramatic way: catch Kawase in the music video, fake-chugging from a flask as she dances aimlessly in her room. Drunk from her feelings, she captures many of those sharing her music on TikTok—overwhelmed with emotion but still acting as the cutest in the scene.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
“When the Moon’s Reaching Out Stars” by Yumi Kawamura [Aniplex, 2006]
Another Japanese trip down Y2K nostalgia led by Westeners were these showcases of tech gadgets popular in the early to mid ‘00s, synced with electronica that evoked the menu-screen BGMs of the era’s video games. A lot of actual SEGA music predictably came up, much from Sonic as well as Soichi Terada’s Ape Escape stuff, as did drum ‘n’ bass instrumentals by no-name track-makers in heavy pastiche of these games. But this zone of Y2K music—if you can call it that—fitting with this subgenre of TikToks covered a surprisingly broad range, making room for, yes, the jazz-fusion R&B of Persona 3 among them. The production of this Yumi Kawamura track seems tailor-made for it in this context with liquid keys glazed over d’n’b percussion. And yet take the video-game connection out, and it starts to sit a bit distant from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92 or the jungle revival of Machine Girl. Much of this, it turns out, relies on vibes.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
“Kuchuu Buranko” by Plastic Tree [Universal, 2006]
Out of all the Japanese bands that’s been brought to the attention of Westerners via TikTok, the emergence of Plastic Tree has been the most fascinating to see. Outfit of the Day posts by teens in what resembles nu-metal gear in my eyes—baggy clothing, mostly if not all black, with chains and studs—got shared to the tune of the band’s 2006 single, “Kuchuu Buranko.” The song’s slow-burning moodiness, plus its reverb-drenched riff in the chorus, sits well with the heavy, brooding rock music also native in the app, like Deftones and Wisp. Unlike early ‘00s Shibuya-kei, a scene still enjoying a boom on the platform, I’ve yet to really encounter other visual-kei acts while I scroll. That said, I’m still holding out for users to excavate more gold from the genre: absent from streaming sites, “Kuchuu Buranko” had to be uploaded to the app by other means, so I want to say there is a demand there, however small.
Watch it on TikTok
And now… This Side of Japan’s Top 50 TikTok Songs of 2024, with blurbs on the first 10. You can check out this list as a playlist here. If you’re feeling extra chaotic, here is my ongoing (currently 450+ song deep) playlist of songs found on my TikTok.
1) “Magnetic” by ILLIT [BELIFT LAB, 2024]
During the brief period before the song’s point dance became the focal point of its TikTok life, idols used “Magnetic” as stock BGM for their daily documentaries. And something about the music—the MIDI feel of its glittery synths, or the bass line, airy as cotton candy—made their clips look like scenes from an imagined childhood home movie, immediately encasing whatever it touched in this filter of nostalgia. It’s dream pop in the literal sense with its hypnagogic arrangement and lyrics about their crush tapping into realms of fantasy, but also in how it sounds like a memory of a feeling than the real deal.
If “Magnetic” is a half-remembered version of another pop song, the title at the tip of our tongue is probably one by NewJeans. Though, ILLIT’s music-box interpretation of Atlanta bass here resembles other faint memories of a whole lot of other pop music looming in the app like a specter: muted UKG, nightmarish chiptune, blown-out electroclash, starry-eyed Shibuya-kei, the sped-up or nightcore versions of that one hit, I can go on. The heavy filters applied to their music obscure as much as they dazzle, and yet the songs hope you still get to the heart of the matter and its hint to give it more attention—that sounds like TikTok to me.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
2) “Igaku” by Sasuke Haraguchi [self-released, 2024]
Though Sasuke Haraguchi’s music carries traces of the many online spaces that the producer lurks, it’s better associated with sites like SoundCloud, YouTube or Nico Nico Douga than TikTok. Which makes the success of “Igaku” on the latter app feel even more of a party crash. The track sounds wildly alien to begin with: if early Sophie was a Vocaloid producer, this liquid IDM track might have been what she made her DAW spit out. Even in the standards of Vocaloid dance songs popular on the app, “Igaku” feels kitchen-sink in a different way, partly from how Haraguchi builds his beat out of compressed noise and clipped vocals rather than the guitar licks or drum fills stuffed in a production by Kairiki Bear and DECO*27. His composition hardly intimidated anyone, however, with users recording themselves to the track and do its viral neck-isolation move, like they’re a human bobble-head. It turns out they’re eager to embrace the most oddball of beats if it’s got a quirky little dance to go with it.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
3) “Zenhoko Bishojo” by noa [self-released, 2024]
It’s hard to tell the idea of which came first in “Zenhoko Bishojo,” the chorus or the meme. No doubt the full song arrived after: noa had been teasing its completion on TikTok for a couple months as the meme had been spreading like wildfire at the top of this year. But as she was drafting the chorus up, how much of her camera-angle lyrics—“even from the front, from the side, from below, you’re so gorgeous / it’s a problem”—was written in mind of it used with actual selfies? Were the pauses between its spiky riff made precisely to initiate the abrupt angle switches in the meme? Both are so in sync, it’s tough trying to imagine one existing without the other.
The elements that mark “Zenhoko Bishojo” and its compatibility with the attention-craving nature of TikTok have come to define noa’s music as a whole: though she has tried out different modes, before and after her viral hit, her biggest successes are the scrappy pop-punk numbers singing hooks that feed the ego. But her “look at me” kind of songs also tap into a sentiment shared by many other hit songs circulating in the app. Sometimes, a song lays out its intent to flatter and inspire mirror shots in an eerily similar manner, like it ripped a page straight out of noa’s playbook. While noa didn’t invent music for selfies, she drafted a fine blueprint.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
4) “Saijokyu Ni Kawaiino!” by Cho Tokimeki Sendenbu [Avex Trax, 2024]
A gallery of moving selfies, TikTok is the prime platform to express the burikkos in us all, and many idol groups submitted their own anthems this year to encourage users to get conceited for once and steal all the attention they can. The best of them find the idols indulging in a winking-cute persona over twinkling musical-esque production. Enough songs have been passed around for this style to crystallize its own unique form, telegraphing a certain attitude regardless of what the lyrics say. Even if the song doesn’t directly have the idols, say, put a bounty on you for not smothering them with affection, the associated sounds basically communicates that hunger for attention.
Cho Tokimeki Sendenbu turned in the best of the form in “Saijokyuu Ni Kawaiino!” while upending expectations. The orthodox string-and-brass idol-pop production suggests yet another made-for-TikTok single following up “Suki!,” the group’s viral hit that gave their late rise to the mainstream. The familiar sugar-sweet sound and their equally bubbly persona, though, end up being a Trojan horse to sneak in a sharp hook filled with spite: since you broke up with me, I’m the cutest I’ve ever been, they boast with the biggest grin, rubbing it all over his face. And with thousands of others singing their song, showing off gestures calling attention to their own better looks, success really is the sweetest revenge.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
5) “goodnight ojosama” by ASMRZ [Danal, 2024]
The novelty behind “Goodnight ojosama” isn’t to be explained; one has to simply experience it as content posted and re-posted on the app. That could be said about basically every song in this list, but it’s best applied to ASMRZ’s bizarre dance-pop hit. Read a Wiki page on the duo’s Tanaka Yukio and Needmorecash if you must, or better yet, prime yourself on Japan’s male host business beforehand. Though, I say you dive into their world cold and play along as the master to two fictional butlers who do their best to tuck you into bed. It’s the dance that caught on anyway—a criss-cross of your arms here, a hip shake there—bringing the two to the stages of SBS’s The Show and summer music festival Water Bomb in Seoul. Why spoil a good gag?
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
6) “Hachigatsu No Yoru” by Silent Siren [DREAMUSIC, 2015]
Out of all of the pop-rock acts of the 2010s brought back into the fold via the app, Silent Siren cover the biggest range of tastes observed on the feed. Their sugar-rush rock easily hang with other bands from that era providing fleeting, heart-on-sleeve power-pop made for a soundtrack about summer crushes—music by J-rock acts like go!go!vanilla, Macaroni Enpitsu and KANA-BOON who’s been popular in posts by teens in school uniform. And “Hachigatsu No Yoru” is engineered to cheer you on about your season flings, down to its college romance music video. Silent Siren, though, also best bridge power-pop with scenes not traditionally associated with rock, primarily idol-pop and anison: they easily beat out those other bands in terms of popularity among idols and their TikTok usage with this song.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
7) “Tiramisu Cake” by WE ARE THE NIGHT [Ruby, 2015]
“Tiramisu Cake” sounds very non-committal from its plodding synth riff that plays like a Casio preset to its hook that hardly attempts to bake the sweet dessert into a more eloquent metaphor. So is the “dance” it has inspired, where the less emotion shown, the better it becomes; the lazy disco choreo looks best when done in sweats or pajamas. The airiness of it all lingers like a jingle, and its dissolving quality makes it easy to forget there is an entire song before and after the tiramisu-cake chorus. Or that there’s an actual band responsible for that matter: without new material since 2021’s BLUE AND SOME BLACK, WE ARE THE NIGHT returned to perform their 8-year old song after it has spread like wildfire. Maybe it’s the homemade feel of the arrangement, but the whole thing looks like they’re singing karaoke to their own song. At this point, the song may as well be beyond them.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
8) “Shika Iro Days” by Noko Shikanoko (CV: Megumi Han), Torako Koshi (CV: Saki Fujita), Anko Koshi (CV: Rui Tanabe) & Meme Bashame (CV: Fuka Izumi) [Lantis, 2024]
Bloggers and news writers have taken themselves to task to attempt deciphering what exactly shikanokonoko noko koshitantan means. Though they got some leads, they get far as to provide the etymology of the phrase, and the name of the titular anime, at best: something that has to do with the character Noko Shikanoko and maybe the four-word idiom koshitantan. But gathering more context about “Shika Iro Days” and the dance meme its first 15 seconds have inspired seems counterintuitive in a way akin to ruining a good joke by trying to explain its very punchline, especially when it has produced a dance meme as equally nonsensical and mind-numbing as its word-salad hook. Don’t overthink and just feel the syllabic consonance behind the dumb yet mesmerizing phrase, the very low-stakes dance attached to it and how the meme has spread and grown in numbers, just like the herd of deer it celebrates.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
9) “Watch Me” by Amano Ririsa (CV: Kaori Maeda) & Tachibana Mikari (CV: Akari Kito) [Pony Canyon, 2024]
The ending theme and subsequent dance launched from the anime 2.5 Dimensional Seduction might not come anywhere close to the scale of YOASOBI’s “IDOL”—to be fair, no anime dance meme probably will—yet the full package captures a similar spirit while riding the coattails of last year’s international anison anthem. Removed from its dance, the song stands well on its own, with it built on a shiny, sweet and grooving electro-pop production. But it’s ultimately a part of a bigger whole. The chorus—the main part circulated on the app—functions as a vehicle for the point dance almost as an instruction guide while the how-to video encourages you to practically be the characters as you participate. Kaori Maeda didn’t have to dress up as Ririsa Amano, the character she voices, but she was still reeled in to perform the dance to start a meme now passed around by idols and cosplayers alike. If anything, “Watch Me” and its inspired craze prove that anime will look to TikTok to get their name out for a while.
Listen to it on Spotify / Watch it on TikTok
10) “GIRL TALK” by Namie Amuro [Avex Trax, 2004]
Scanning through today’s J-R&B, the pop singers take cues from Namie Amuro not so much of her as an Eurobeat superstar but the casual it girl who seems approachable enough to share some, well, girl talk. Maybe the predecessor closer in spirit to acts putting out candid relationship pop like Nozomi Kitay or AYANE is Kana Nishino, whose return to pop from her hiatus hyped up ‘00s kids this year. The latter icon, though, ultimately came up along the path paved by Amuro. Heisei nostalgia does partly drive the resurgence of “GIRL TALK” as with Amuro’s direct successors like Crystal Kay. But as it syncs with 360-degree OOTD posts of teens and 20-somethings everywhere, the song also enjoys another time in the sun as a record that sounds like as current as the other records it has dutifully inspired.
Watch it on TikTok
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“Study Equal Magic!” by S.E.M. (2015)
11) Creepy Nuts - “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” (2024)
12) Crystal Kay - “Boyfriend -partII-” (2003)
13) S.E.M. - “Study Equal Magic!” (2015)
14) NewJeans - “How Sweet” (2024)
15) G-Dragon & T.O.P. - “Don’t Go Home” (2010)
16) Nozomi Kitay & GAL D ft. Mukade - “Moshi Moshi” (2024)
17) Ru-a - “Neon Sign” (2024)
18) KOMOREBI - “Giri Giri” (2024)
19) Mulasaki Ima - “femme fatale A” (2024)
20) Yuki Chiba - “Team Tomodachi” (2024)
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“Stroppy Mac” by Keppie (2023)
21) Keppie - “Stroppy Mac” (2023)
22) CREAM - “Picky” (2024)
23) Kyururintte Shitemite - “Love Kyun Wanted!” (2024)
24) andymori - “Sugoi Hayasa” (2009)
25) GINTA & ODAKEi - “UCHIDA 1” (2024)
26) FRUITS ZIPPER - “NEW KAWAII” (2024)
27) Wonder Girls - “Tell Me” (2007)
28) f5ve - “Underground” (2024)
29) Zachz Winner - “doodle” (2024)
30) PAIN & PIEC3 POPPO - “Barbie Gal” (2024)
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“Namae Wa Kataomoi” by indigo la end (2023)
31) Eternxlkz - “SLAY!” (2024)
32) Kocchi No Kento - “Hai Yorokonde” (2024)
33) CUTIE STREET - “Kawaii Dake Ja Damedesuka?” (2024)
34) Hoang Thuy Linh - “See Tinh” (2022)
35) indigo la end - “Namae Wa Kataomoi” (2023)
36) sato moka - “melt bitter” (2020)
37) KOGYARU - “SHIRANKEDO” (2023)
38) Gyubin - “I Really Like You” (2024)
39) SoraMafuUraSaka - “Role-playing Game” (2017)
40) Koresawa - “Dear ex-girlfriends” (2024)
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“I wonder” by Da-iCE (2024)
41) Suisei Hoshimachi - “BIBBIDIBA” (2024)
42) kinoshita - “Erai Erai Erai!” (2022)
43) Chanmina - “B-List” (2023)
44) Shigure Ui - “Ui Mugibatake De Tsukamaete” (2024)
45) BONNIE PINK - “A Perfect Sky” (2006)
46) Rina Katahira - “Hey boy!” (2014)
47) Jun Hyo Seong - “Into You” (2015)
48) Mega Shinnosuke - “Ai To U” (2024)
49) YUI - “SUMMER SONG” (2010)
50) Da-iCE - “I wonder” (2024)
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