A-to-J Connections' Favorite Songs of 2024!

1/7/2025

It's wild that A-to-J has been around for a full decade now, and this is officially our tenth year of "Favorite Song" articles! This was originally started as a sort of lazy way to doing an "awards" article, but has since grown to be a fun tradition that has expanded its way to articles for other media as well. It's also pretty much the only thing from Year One that's stuck around to today. Just as in years past, several A-to-J members pick their favorite song of the year, and let you know why it's something worth checking out. You can check them all out of course, but you can also let us know what you think about our choices, and how yours compare. These articles are always an eclectic mix owing to the varied membership of A-to-J Connections, and this year's grouping is no different! 2024 was a long and crazy year, and we were in rare form throughout. We're here for the music though, and 2024 gave us lots of that! Without further ado we will jump into our favorite songs that dropped in 2024! Sit back, relax, and maybe discover some new artists and/or music too! Here's to a rocking 2025 and beyond!

Ivan: Photographer / Correspondent

For my favorite song of 2024 I chose "Otonoke" (オトノケ) by the group Creepy Nuts. This song was used for the opening theme of the 2024 Anime Dandadan. The song also hit number one on the Billboard Japan Top 100.

Creepy Nuts has been one of my favorite groups for the past few years. I discovered them when they wrote and performed the opening to the anime Call of the Night. They continued to write anime OP hits with “Bling-Bang - Bang-Born” for the anime Mashle.

In the music video for "Otonoke", the band was 3D Digitized and superimposed with large heads, creating a creepy atmosphere that compliments the anime. Said anime was is one of my favorites of the year. Creepy Nuts continues to produce hit after hit and I cannot wait to see more work from them.

Creepy Nuts - "Otonoke"

J.D.: Moderator / Contributor

Hi, everybody. It’s your friendly, neighborhood modder-man J.D., and my favorite song of 2024 was “Running in My Head” by MIYAVI. You may already know it as the opening to the anime Code Geass: Rozé of the Recapture, and while that series might have lived up to the expectations I had for it, this song was in no way disappointing. For me, this is up there with the original Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion OP “Colors” by Flow.

From the opening static, followed by a brief silence before the guitar and drums kick in, this song takes hold like few others. Then the first verse kicks in, and the frustration slowly grows until it explodes in the chorus that I will find myself singing or humming to myself at random times. As the title states, this song just has a way of running in my head at any random time and if I had to listen to any anime OP this year and loop for eternity, this would be my pick.

MIYAVI - "Running Around My Head"

Manuel: General Manager / Editor-In-Chief

Even though we like to say that "A-to-J" doesn't actually mean anything specific anymore, and that it's just our name, it did use to refer to "America to Japan". We had a sharp focus on Japanese media, and pretty much refused to talk about anything else. Obviously that's lessened over the years, and frequent readers of these articles might notice that my choices have pretty much been exclusively Chinese since around 2019. That changes today.

Me and Warren (AKA "Badman") have been talking about doing an all-girl version of the Japanese Metal panel for a while now, and this year we finally submitted it to ALA. This turned out to be a rather big undertaking, and we weren't totally sure what bands to include. On a whim, I decided to add a band called HANABIE. to our notes as they were one of the newer bands I knew. I say "knew", but I actually hadn't even listened to any of their music yet. I was only aware of them because another A-to-J member suggested that I check them out earlier this year. They had seen them at a recent concert, and thought I'd like them. I made note of them in the back of my mind, but pretty much forgot about them until the panel writing. Throughout said writing, HANABIE. was almost taken out for time reasons. Then I actually listened to their music.

There's a lot to be said about missed opportunities, but I can't believe I've been sleeping on such an amazing band for so long. They are a mix of all sorts of Metal genres, complete with a style that is 100% Japanese. They refer to themselves sometimes as "Harajuku Metal", and that title fits them perfectly. They have a sound that the Alt Idol groups that classify themselves as Metal wish they could have, and I'm here for it. I could go on and on about them, but I've already made this far longer than I intended to.

The song I'm choosing is their non-album single "GIRL'S TALK". This isn't exactly my favorite song of theirs, but it stood out to me in their recent releases. It's catchy, it's heavy, and it's also the song we included in the Girl's Metal panel we're going to host at ALA in just a few days. It's not often that a group makes me care about a certain type of music again, but getting into HANABIE. has made me wonder what other Japanese music I've been casually ignoring. In short, I think my picks for 2025 will be very different. Don't make the mistake I did, check out HANABIE. now if you haven't already!

HANABIE. - "GIRL'S TALK"

It may be cheating, but I wanted to throw in some of my honorable mentions here at the end. First up, SIXIWANZI finally got a decent English-language YouTube channel, and there seems to be some effort in getting their music out there. Too bad you still can't listen to (Or buy!) their music in the US... Anyway, they still have yet to release a full album, but they released some original music this year, the most notable of which is their song "MENU". This was actually going to be my pick for the year before I found out about HANABIE., so please check it out. I hope that SIXIWANZI gets more exposure, and maybe some legal ways to check out their music that don't revolve around YouTube.

Also, just because I feel like I have to toss in a NAMEWEE song each year, I was happy to see him do more songs with Anthony Perry, the most notable of these was "Za Fit". Check them both out below!

SIXIWANZI - "Menu"

NAMEWEE (ft. Anthony Perry) - "Za Fit"

Warren: Streaming Host / Contributor

Guess who’s baaaaack?! It is me, Badman, back to share my favorite song of the year! 2024 was a killer year full of absolute BANGERS from all spectrums of genres, but there is only one song that takes the cake! That song is... "Team Tomodachi" (Team Freinds in English) by Yuki Chiba (also known as Koh).

"Team Tomodachi" took the hip-hop world by storm! It was such an instant success that all other Asian countries and eventually the US would make their remixes of this song. The song’s beat is one the most FIRE mid-tempo, Memphis type beats known to man. It's catchy, a total vibe, and the chorus is contagious: "Chiimu Tomodachi! Chiimu Tomodachi!". Not only is the song absolute bop, the lyrical content is nothing short of promoting positivity with the homies. What do we do with the homies? We unite from far and wide. We eat the best of food. We drink the best of drinks. We hangout heavily. Most of all, we stay tightly bonded!

"Team Tomodachi" clearly takes my pick for the A-to-J’s favorite song of the year. If you are a lover of good vibes and hip-hop, checkout this banger. You will not be disappointed. 10,000 percent fire! Don’t forget to also checkout the many remixes as well!

Yuki Chiba - "Team Tomodachi"

Winfield: Staff Writer

This year has been a blast listening through the songs in the Hello! Project idol fandom, or solo artists under their music label. I would say that my favourite song was Sato Masaki’s second single and most specifically, its second song, 花鳥風月春夏秋冬 (Kachoufuugetsu Shunkashuutou). It may have been obvious as Masaki is my favourite under the Hello! Project umbrella, but the song’s melody is really catchy, and if you weren’t in the know, it could easily be used as an opening song for some kind of shounen anime. The production of the MV seems simple being shot in a studio, but the cinematography and editing makes it interesting as well with the various camera angles of Masaki. Hope that you enjoy it as much as I did!

Sato Masaki - "Kachoufuugetsu Shunkashuutou"

Just because I couldn’t decide on a definitive favourite song, I want to shout out a song that was a runner up in deciding between this song and "Kachoufuugetsu Shunkashuutou". That song would be Tsubaki Factory’s "Baby Spider". I really like the music, especially the piano in the intro. The wide angle shots to show the close-up of each member was interesting and I like the setting as it reminds me of some kind of a Western European building. Hope you enjoy this song if you check it out!

Tsubaki Factory - "Baby Spider"

Here we are once again at the end of another "Favorite Songs of The Year" article. We hope you enjoyed our individual favorite songs of the year, and we also hope that everyone had the best year of music possible, and that we're all heading to an even better future. 2025 might be a trying year for music, and we can't wait to see what it holds for us throughout. For the past several years we've closed these articles with sentiments like: "It can only get better!", and we hope that we don't have to keep doing that in the future. Keep your fingers crossed on all that of course, and hopefully the music will be good whatever the world throws at us next! Thanks again for letting us show you what we love, and here's hoping that we can continue bring you more great content throughout 2025 and beyond!

-Manuel & the rest of the A-to-J Team!

Comments