Japanese pop has its first global viral hit of 2025, and it’s about ice cream…and love.
“Ai Scream!” by special mixed-media idol trio AiScReam officially came out in late January of this year, and gradually became an online hit in Japan. By mid March, it was the top number on Spotify Japan’s “Viral 50” ranking, holding the number-one position for weeks. Helping it out was constant use across social media, powered in particular (as these things go now) by short-form videos on TikTok, YouTube Shorts and beyond.
Yet in the past week, “Ai Scream!” shot up Spotify’s “Global Viral 50” while also performing well (and in some cases, actually going to number one) on individual nation’s rankings for online-assisted hits. Again, thank the magic of bite-sized video content…but why this song?
Let’s serve up some background on the first J-pop viral hit of the year, and why there’s plenty of sweetness to uncover beyond its simple virality.
What is AiScReam?
To truly understand AiScReam, you must first grasp the Love Live! Series, the world from which it comes. Started in 2010, this multimedia franchise follows high-school-aged idols as they try to make their music dreams come true. While voice actors perform the songs, the characters themselves are represented in an anime style…except when performing live, then it’s the actual humans on stage playing them. Primary groups release CD singles, appear in animated series, perform at concerts and more.
What could have been viewed as a clever twist on the then-dominant idol ecosystem upon its arrival has revealed itself to be one of the most influential pieces of Japanese entertainment in the 21st century. Besides simply surviving several idol cycles of popularity, the multimedia model Love Live! leaned on has been adopted by franchises such as Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle and groups like Strawberry Prince among others. There’s an argument to be made that modern virtual YouTubing owes a debt to this reality-blurring project, though even if you don’t want to go that far, Love Live! definitely provided an early indicator of how powerful an anime component combined with music could be in getting fans.
Love Live! cultivated a pop universe all its own, and fittingly that means a dazzling array of side groups and sub units. That could be an article all its own, but the key is understanding that AiScReam exists within this lane, bringing together three members from a trio of different groups (the characters being Ruby Kurosawa, Ayumi Uehara and Shiki Wakana). What makes this group special — and probably plays a role in the virality to come — is that it’s the first time performers from different generations (and thus primary groups) of the series have come together to form a special unit, in part because the voice actors host a radio show together.
This unique outfit performed its debut song “Ai Scream!” for the first time as part of the Yokohama finale of a Love Live! Asia jaunt (thank you dedicated fan wikis). A recording of this would end up being key to its 2025 success.
When did it take off?
Outside of Love Live! communities, a clip featuring the recorded version of the song overlaid onto footage from the live performance focusing on a back-and-forth bit following the chorus — wherein AiScReam ask one another “what do you like,” with the response being an ice cream flavor followed by “but I love you even more” — appeared on TikTok.
As these things tend to go, the brief upload spread further than just fans of mixed-media idol groups. In Japan, lip-synch videos and covers proliferated across short-form video platforms, aided by the choreography of this sing-speak portion. Abroad, that happened too…but the real driver was fan animations featuring oddball combos of celebrities (or perhaps Gen-Z-appropriate pairings, I plead oldness on this front) such as Drake, Donald Trump and KSI. That led to more earnest shorts featuring assorted characters, and more goofy offerings like a dude just trucking ice cream while the song plays.
If there’s a real engine for “Ai Scream’s” movement, however, it’s K-pop idols.
Korean artists embraced the song on social media and in some cases live, as seen from aespa’s Karina doing the bit during a special event in Tokyo Dome this past April. It’s a long list, including BABYMONSTER, IVE, ATEEZ, virtual group PLAVE and more. Given the global reach these outfits have — not to mention the pull in Japan — it feels safe to say they gave this one a huge push in recent weeks.
“Ai Scream!” was in high demand on Japan’s domestic viral charts for several weeks now, but its international breakthrough has come more recently, with last week’s arrival in the top three of Spotify’s Viral 50 being its data-driven coronation. It’s probably reaching its peak visibility — when German streamer / influencer / ding-dong Streichbruder visited Japan recently, he played “Ai Scream!” out of his annoying suitcase-meets-boombox speaker on the train, much to the horror of Japanese netizens (a subsequent appearance in Shibuya went much better). When even the nuisances of the world lean into a song, you know it has reached a big level.
Why does this matter?
Most immediately, “Ai Scream!” is a reminder of the unpredictability surrounding which J-pop songs will find an audience in the world today. Like Creepy Nuts’ “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” or Fujii Kaze’s “Shinunoga E-Wa” before it, AiScReam’s debut number is a song that had zero intentions of being a hit outside of Japan mutating into something that will define the year it was released. The growth of J-pop internationally has been enabled by social media taking songs and making it their own, and this perky cut about dessert certainly continues that tradition. Bonus points for reminding of the long-running connection between J-pop and K-pop, often pitted as rivals but actually way closer than folks realize…and awed by one another’s silly viral songs.
Yet at its core, “Ai Scream!” gets at the tension of modern J-pop in the global space. It does so with a bit of a twist — in an age where so many songs gain attention thanks to the anime or media property they are attached with, “Ai Scream!” has gotten big despite seemingly the bulk of those outside of Japan knowing what Love Live! even is. That can lead to some anger from those familiar with the series, as one will discover if you poke around communities devoted to the series now having to face an inundation of new listeners to the influential property they’ve long loved. It’s the inverse of people being bummed out by how many musicians from Japan end up being defined by animated franchises, despite having deep catalogs worth loving. It’s the catch-twenty-two of Japanese music’s global ascent.
I think it also shows the positives of that, though. “Ai Scream!” is a great song, blending contemporary dance-pop elements with good ol’ idol pep, to create an up-tempo number full of great details and multiple ear-worm sections. Sure, a lot of people will come to it as simple meme fodder…that’s the state of all art in the 21st century…but others will, in the same way “Plastic Love” or “Idol” nudged listeners to new troves of Japanese music, dig deeper after encountering the kawaii-fireworks of “Ai Scream.” The Love Live! series features no shortage of great pop for the curious to discover — including more food-centric cuts featuring members of AiScReam — and this could be their gateway in.
That’s the positive side of this era — for some, viral songs like “Ai Scream!” reveal a smorgasbord of new music to dig into, all of which was waiting there in the open. It’s a chance, in the end, to add even more varieties of art to what people like…hopefully more than chocomint ice cream.
