Maeda Atsuko's [Flower] #1 for Oricon Weekly + [Koko ni Ita Koto] sales Update

Well well, looks like the queen has done it again! This time round it's on the Oricon Weekly charts. Beating out the competition from Korean group SHINee and pop group AAA, Maeda Atsuko's Flower grabbed #1 for the week with close to 177k units sold on the market. This makes Acchan the first female artiste to debut topping the single charts since Kaoru Amane's (Sawajiri Erika) "Taiyou no Uta" in 2006.

According to Oricon, Acchan has also topped the record to become the female artiste with the best first week sales records this year. Previously, this record was held by her peer Itano Tomomi, who sold 163k copies of her debut single Dear J. Acchan's sales for Flower is also now the highest first week sales for any AKB subunit.

But wait! There's more! As of this week, AKB48's Koko ni Ita Koto sold more than 716k copies, exceeding EXILE's "Negai no Tou" sales of 707k for the year so far. This means that AKB48 has the record for the highest selling album and single for the year so far! Wow!

Of course, all these results are not surprising. Given that AKB48 is the hottest talk in the Japan streets right now, producing such results, especially from the face of the team, is no more than what is expected from them. I hope they will continue to do well, and also put up better music for the fans (: