generasia:Featured article for 2009 week 36

Abe Mao

Abe Mao (阿部真央) is a Japanese pop singer signed to Pony Canyon. Abe Mao began playing piano when she was in third grade, and by junior high, she decided she wanted to be a singer. When she was high school, she dropped piano and started playing guitar. She graduated in Spring 2008 and proceeded to move to Tokyo.

In October, Abe released an acoustic version of her song "MY BABY" on iTunes, which was featured as the single of the week. Soon, Abe gained feature coverage on MySpace and au one music. Her popularity slowly rose, achieving high ranks on BARKS, Google, and mixi. In one day, her MySpace received 20,000 listens.

In January 2009, Abe released her debut album, Free. The album ranked #17 on the weekly Oricon chart. Later, she embarked on her first live tour, Abe Mao Live No.0, in March, starting in her hometown of Oita and stretching across seven prefectures in Japan. Since then, she has released two singles, "Tsutaetai Koto / I wanna see you" and "Anata no Koibito ni Naritai no Desu", of which two of the three A-sides were previously released as acoustic versions on iTunes before her debut.