Preliminary Remarks
Please excuse me while I attempt to figure out how I had previously managed to give actual comments in my year-end Love Live music ranking which extended to something beyond simply “Lanzhuuuuu”, “Aqouuuuurs” and “Yohaneeeeee”. Ahem. Bro Love Live 2023 times is crazy bro. Like, I know I’m a fan and I say this about every year, but dang. So many great tracks. I think a big thing for me is that the backing instrumentals have charted a consistent course up in quality the past few years, causing a runaway rise in production quality. Last year the franchise explored a lot of club bangers. This year there seemed to be a higher prevalence of chillstep, chillhop and funk or jazz fusion tracks (disclaimer that genres are imaginary and i am probably wrong). At the same time, with the inclusion of Hasunosora and the new Liella girls we’ve finally reached the capacity where I can’t immediately remember what specific subunit a lot of tracks belong to without looking it up.
Song Ranking
Bit mean to say, but for me probably the only decent song to come out of School Idol Musical. The vocals are still a bit hammy for my liking (it’s a musical after all), but as it goes on this could pass for a normal Love Live release.
This track is in this spot bc why not but at this point i have nothing interesting left to say.
Sunshine in the Mirror provided a chance to hear a number of groupings and styles that we likely wouldn’t have in normal canon. This chillhop track is one major example.
The chorus progression is fun and I like the lower register the harmonies are sung in.
I like the way the song builds pressure in the verses and then kinda bursts into each chorus. Other than that – catchy.
I’ve spent like the last five years jokingly complaining about how in the move from Starlight into Wish and Fire Bird they took away Karin’s synth permissions (though on actual reflection they were still present in Vivid World and her DiverDiva subunit), so it’s vindicating to see this album turn around and offer a track which melds all her displayed styles into what is the secret best genre of music – electro swing.
Catchy.
Reminds me of Rakuen Project and that’s one of my all-time favourite anime OPs so
I like the backing music on this one a lot.
Cerise Bouquet’s best showing at present. I have at multiple points endeavoured to place this track higher, in the sense that seeing it near the tail end kinda feels disappointing. Because this song hits, right? It should be in the upper echelons. But then I look at the list above and can’t swap anything lower, because actually all Love Live music is just good.
Ignoring that this song was used as a Symphogear-esque vocal battle insert where the trio undergo like two transformations each and chain together multiple ultimate attacks all in order to defeat…two possessed-but-otherwise-physically-normal deer, it’s a cool track. Very fun and energetic. Love Live has a number of melodic rock and metal tracks, but this is my first time hearing them tackle this kind of shouting.
This is the track I spent the longest trying to write a comment for because it’s very cool, but I didn’t manage a reflection other than that it is simply catchy. Potentially the catchiest song for this year’s review, in fact.
The real-time structure of Link Like Love Live has kept Mira-Cra locked away for majority of the year until they finally debuted in the story, so I enjoyed all the early snippets when they would feature on the group albums. This is their favourite track of mine so far.
My Shadow, Scapegoat, Mirage Voyage and especially Game On here. This year has seen a number of good electro swing tracks from each branch, but as is standard Aqours takes their turn and completely sweeps.
Catchy. Not sure what else can really be said about this one. The autotune + synth-heavy sound it aims for is pretty basic, but it works.
Real catchy hours here. I like the funky bass guitar.
Catchy. Though admittedly I do hope that this style isn’t going to solely define KALEIDOSCORE moving forward, since I want Wien to still have the evil symphonies she had when she was Love Live’s edgy goth girl antagonist.
The song which began DOLLCHESTRA’s runaway lead in the Hasunosora discography. They had such a strong start with this and Kibouteki Prism, which has only let up in intensity once or twice.
Catchy.
Aqours EDM good.
If Hasunosora’s first album was them intending to test the waters and find a direction for the series moving forward (similar to the experimental first Niji album), this track is that which won the race to determine the kind of energetic swing they’d carry forward. The first song their first album, Dream Believers, was very generic for the franchise. So it was a rush ticking over to the second song and seeing that, yeah, they’re already going ham. In a lot of my early discussion of Sunshine I kept reiterating this observation that because μ’s had already undertaken the initial struggle to find out what works for them in narrative drama and music, their successor Aqours had the ability to race out the gates at a high level of quality from the beginning. The same could be felt when Nijigasaki debuted with their unique styles, and now the music the Hasunosora project is producing again makes me feel like they really are standing on the shoulders of giants, adapting from everything that Aqours and Perfect Dream Project had discovered in their rise.
Lanzhuuuuuuuuuuuu! Girl’s powerful enough that she can just go “come on, come on, come on, hands up” for four minutes straight and it’s a banger all the same. Good song, with a funny name. I am aware that it’s a pneumonic for “love you forever” when read with chinese characters, but I have noticed the trend Love Love has been going down. Calling their Niji subgroup R3BIRTH was kinda cute. Calling a Liella subgroup 5yncri5e was weird. Calling this song 5201314 I am officially confused.
Very funky. Liella don’t release as frequently as the other active groups but every time they do it’s high quality.
When starting the Next Sky OVA I made it approximately forty seconds into the file before pausing to jot down a note that this opening insert song had made specific reference to the “birdcage”, which is an important symbolic throughline from Sunshine to Nijigasaki. Then I resumed it, reached the end of the song and immediately opted to rewind and listen again. The R3BIRTH girls usually have a poppy, energetic sound so it’s nice to hear them tackle a moody atmosphere like this.
Last year I placed Paradise Chime at #19, mentioning that it was probably You’s best showing thus far. Ao no Aurora busts right through that limit. A very unusual-sounding song which sticks the landing. I had to give it a number of listens before I could feel like I was properly following what the melody is doing, because at first the experience almost doesn’t make sense. The instruments are kind of…odd? And there’s a subtly haunting element to the lower key You is singing in? But once I got a feel for its concept, the way it uses some fairly standard vocal direction in the verses to lull you into complacency before hitting with that dissonant chorus is super cool, and a huge earworm.
Musically and narratively this is just Far Far Away Pt. 2. A darker, distorted take, performed on the stage and placing the same focus on pushing the limit of Yohane’s singing for her solo series. So it’s wholly unsurprising to do the maths and conclude that it lands itself in the spot right behind. They knew what they was doin with Yohane this year huh.
Early prediction from Sunshine in the Mirror ep1 was that this would turn out to be the immediate, obvious #1 in my year-end LL ranking like Motto-Zutto Be With You was. While it is ultimately ousted by an Aqours track running at full capacity, Yohane kept this right near the top all year.
Aqours is the best Love Live group because they absolutely demolish every new genre and style that they try. They don’t really conform to a vocal niche like Liella or sectioned musical identity in the way that Hasunosora or each of the individual idols of Nijigasaki do, but instead are just constantly reaching out to grab more and more unique sounds for their music. And the skill ceiling keeps rising together with the number of genres added to their discography. It was only a couple years ago that I highlighted KU-RU-KU-RU Cruller as embodying a peak for their idol sound. But I can now look in retrospect and see that was not their music peaking in any capacity, rather it would come to set a new baseline level of quality for Aqours. Everything they release is now at least on that same level, and there are many tracks such as Silent Pain which still push the limit of their music yet further. Like, I had my Aqours top 10 all neatly tiered out. Then 2021 happened. Then 2022 happened. Now here we are again. Local country girls can’t stop winning.
skapbadoa 
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