Ever since Maeda Atsuko released her new debut single, Flower, fans have been either very astonished or very unimpressed by her performance. Those astonished fans believe that every single aspect of her performance such as her vocals, eye contact, movement, flow, pitch range, emotion, was on key, and that her talent has not been unnoticed. Whereas the unimpressed fans see her as a potential, and not necessarily a singer who is apt to perform solo at this time. They believe that, unlike the astonished fans, her vocals needs to be more confident, which essentially means to cover more of the flow and the pitch range, making sure that her voice does not go too high, too low, or too monotonous, which tends to be the problem; she needs to make more eye contact with the audience rather than just stare at the ground or straight ahead; move with the rhythm of the song so she does not look like a nervous auditioning contestant.
With that said, I'd have to strongly agree with the unimpressed fans, in that she is heading in the right direction, but just needs to polish her act together more and fix every minute detail of her flaws, which is all of the aspects stated before. She does, admittedly, have a rather luscious face and a "soothing" voice according to the astonished fans, but there has to be something more those features. You can't just have good looks and have poor singing vocals, or else those features won't be as effective. Thus, Maeda may need to practice her vocals more with her instructor/trainer, or perhaps to give in going solo. The purpose of AKB48 is to sing together in a synchronized fashion to ultimately produce a massive and effective idol group, regardless of each and every individual's vocals because they are all singing together. Maeda may have chosen to go solo due to her interest in going in a different direction to not sing with a massive group, but to sing by herself and freely discover her true, personal voice. And the reason why she was able to go in this direction was because of her rising popularity in AKB48, otherwise known to take first place in the 3rd Senbatsu General Election.
So it is arguable that she is better off as the main member of AKB48 rather than a solo performer. Becoming a solo performer takes so much work and so much pressure that it sometimes can be hard for certain people to keep up with it. Although there are some American singers, such as Beyonce and Fergie who have went solo, they are able to bear with the work. Late teens going solo could happen, but it is best to think about it carefully before doing so. Is this singer really apt to perform solo? Although Itano Tomomi, member of Team K, has recently released Dear J, and has surprisingly sold more than 80,000 copies on the first day, fans are just buying it for the hell of it. It's the looks that attract them, since all the fans are mostly thinking of the idols as role models, wanting to be just like them. The fans aren't really focusing more on the idol's potential talent and voice. So even though she is not the best singer who is not ready to go solo yet, she is set to release her second single, Fuini, which, according to her, will be more romantic, unlike Dear J which was more catchy. The fans and the media are blind. Oh boy, I guess I'll be wondering how many copies Flower will sell.
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