I just thought I post the article ABC published yesterday about Tokio Hotel with a video at the end.
Tokio Hotel: The Latest German ExportLong-Haired Rockers Are the Antidote to the Jonas BrothersBy MONICA DE LA ROSA
Move
over Heidi Klum and Hugo Boss. The new ambassadors of German popular
culture have arrived in the United States, but they're not what you'd
expect.
This German band is gaining popularity in the United States.
Tokio
Hotel may sound like a new Japanese resort, but it's actually a group
of four rocker guys whose singer is often mistaken for a girl but is
actually the identical twin of the dreadlock-haired guitarist. Puzzled
yet? The band scored two No. 1 albums in its native Germany, and yet
most of the band members aren't even old enough to legally drink here.
Tokio
Hotel's sharp rise to fame, from playing school concerts and weddings a
few years ago in its hometown of Magdeburg, a hundred miles southwest
of Berlin, to currently selling out venues in New Jersey, San Francisco
and Chicago, can arguably be seen as Internet-driven. The band has
amassed a frenzied fan base of mostly young women who take the title of
the band's first English album, "Scream," seriously -- by doing just
that at a mere glimpse of the band.
Wendy is a young fan from
Brooklyn, N.Y., but jokingly claims, "Ich bin ein Deutsch!" She thinks
the band is "hot," but also found the music to be so powerful it "can
bring tears" to her eyes. "Tokio Hotel ist der beste!," says Doris, 18,
who says she is learning German because of her interest in the band.
"I've
spent over $600 this past week for all the tickets I just bought and
the traveling I have to do," said Kiila, a 20-year-old student who
plans to attend as many concerts as she can on the band's tour through
North America this month. She spent four days hanging around Times
Square near MTV's studio in the hopes of meeting the band, which
recently hosted the network's show "TRL."
Like the launch of
some resplendent blitzkrieg, Tokio Hotel is eager to conquer American
shores. Its success abroad draws comparisons here as the "Jonas
Brothers of Germany" -- if the Jonas Brothers were a long-haired,
sexually ambiguous-looking act, blending genres from pop to glam rock
to hip-hop.
Tattooed lead singer Bill Kaulitz, 18, is rarely
seen without black eye makeup and with his hair, also dyed black,
styled in a gravity-defying lion's mane. Born in the Internet and video
game era, he already seems astutely aware of the power of the visual,
and credits the Internet with the band's breakthrough outside Germany.
"Especially as newcomers, it's really important to have the Internet,
where people can talk about you and listen to your music," he said in
accented English. When thousands of fan Web sites, blogs and YouTube
postings began sprouting up worldwide, its record company noticed.
"The
fans outside of Germany send us e-mails, they come together and shoot a
video or something, and they say please come to wherever, Israel,
whereever," Kaulitz said. So the band did -- not only Israel , but
France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia and other countries, often selling
out stadiums and fulfilling a kind of prophecy of the band's chosen
name -- which band members changed from "Devilish" in 2005 -- which
evokes their love of foreign destinations.
Although the two
often complete each other's thoughts, Tom Kaulitz, who plays lead
guitar, prefers the almost opposite look of his sibling -- baggy
clothes, a sports cap around blond dreads and a lip piercing. Drummer
Gustav Schäfer and bass-guitarist Georg Listing complete the
four-member band.
Adoration: From Internet to Miles-Long Fan LetterSeveral
female fans admit to first being intrigued by the band's looks and
mash-up styles, but insist they became hooked, some even obsesses, when
listening to the songs. In Germany, the band is a household name, and
girls stalk its recording studio, hiding with cameras behind bushes.
Pieces of the Kaulitz twins' former school bus stop were auctioned off
last week on eBay for thousands of euros (no bids though). The quartet
once received a fan letter that was more than 7 miles long. (They
didn't read the whole thing.)
The Goethe Institute claims
increasing interest in its German language classes because of the band,
especially in its Paris branch. The San Francisco office organized a
concert ticket giveaway earlier this year, and deputy director Anna
Weber said in one day without any promotion "we got 80 to 120 e-mails.
We got so many phone calls, you have no idea. We thought they were
unknown here."
The Internet has made it easy for fans to chat
and share stories with others around the world who share their passion.
After a concert ends, girls post videos and pictures from their cameras
and phones capturing the band's performances, it seems, from every
possible angle.
The boys have mastered the quality of being
exotic, and yet approachable, online. They make video appeals for fans'
award votes and post weekly "Tokio Hotel TV" Web episodes as a way "to
take the fans with us." The band was stopped only momentarily in March,
when it had to cancel several concerts so Bill Kaulitz could have
surgery to remove a cyst on his vocal chords.
These teenage
rockers are becoming accustomed to the idea of growing up in front of
the eyes of a 24/7 media world. "Our whole life changed from one day to
another," Kaulitz said. "We have so much inspiration. It's everywhere.
... So I always have a pen with me and a laptop, and I write everything
down." The band has started to work on its new album, which it will
release in German and English. The band writes and plays its own music
but is helped by a team of four producers. "We are like a big family,"
Kaulitz said.
That family seems to have landed on a winning
combination of lyrics laced with "emo" angst, wrapped in a flamboyant
pop-rock package. It's PG-rated but still edgy enough for younger fans.
Songs range from catchy pop anthems to anti-suicide messages to
appealing rock ballads. Tokio Hotel seems to straddle the line between
boy band fad and hopeful rock icons, but where it will eventually end
up is unpredictable.
Tokio Hotel vs. Miley Cyrus"Scream"
landed in U.S. stores in May and peaked at No. 39 on the Billboard 200,
selling quite a bit less below the multiplatinum status the band
achieved in Europe, but you wouldn't know it by the Internet hype. This
month fans voted online to give Tokio Hotel two MTV Video Music Award
nominations for best new artist and best pop video, pitting the band
against best-selling artists like Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears. "We
think we have no chance, but it's just great being nominated," Bill
Kaulitz said.
Right now, the band is just awestruck at the
attention they are getting in America. "The fans voted so much for us,
it's a great feeling," Tom Kaulitz said. "It's really a big deal for a
German band to have the chance to go to the U.S."
One would
have to go back almost a generation when a German band last achieved
huge crossover success in America. In the 1980s. The Scorpions topped
the charts with songs like "Rock You Like a Hurricane" and artist Nena
scored big with her Cold War-era protest song "99 Luftballoons."
Incidentally, watching Nena as a child was what inspired Bill Kaulitz
to become a singer, he said.
But for every "next big thing,"
there can be an eventual backlash. "I don't really want them to get
really famous here," posted "Isabella" on Tokio Hotel's U.S fan site.
"Getting big also brings about the question of them losing sight of
their German culture."
As fans grow, so do "haters" of the
band, who create and upload anti-Tokio Hotel videos and Web pages. The
Internet has other dangerous downsides. Recently in France, a young man
was arrested for allegedly posing as Bill Kaulitz in chat rooms,
convincing young girls to send him naked pictures, which he then posted
on the Web. The band says it doesn't have personal accounts like
MySpace, other than its official Web sites, just for this reason.
But
most of the fans simply want to concentrate on the good stuff, like one
young brunette who waited on a New York City street to see the band
when it visited. She is crying but smiling, her teeth lined in braces.
"I got Bill's autograph. .... I got their autograph, and I love them!"
she cried, wiping tears from her eyes with neon-polished fingertips,
just another uber-happy Tokio Hotel fan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfES-4qjpEw
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