Tokio Hotel WW110 (Reviews and stuff)

PAINFUL SWITCH

Bill: I am not quickly embarrased but at a concert in Herford i have made a big mistake. When we were playing "schrei" I wanted to get somebody on stage to sing the last notes with me. I pointed to someone in the audience and said: "Then we'll take this young man. Do you know the lines?" He knew the song but when I asked for his name he said: "My name Jasmine!" Man, that was so embarrassing.

TOP SECRET!

NEW ALBUM ON AUTUMN/WINTER ?

In the meantime the german band found the time to think of the new album, which could be in stores in autumn/winter.Closed mouths about it, but some people assure that it will be a new start, overall riguarding the music , and that it will be supported by a top-secret video project.The realization of the new album is followed by a small crew filming every phase,from the creation of the songs to the recording, from reharsal to the cover work: in short a behind the scene that seems very...tasty!!!

Some of these bits are really mean, so try not to hate the author too much. He or she isn't aware fo the inherent fabulous-ness of Tokio Hotel.

Report One

I can’t get over it, I’ve never seen Bill [18] look so casual like in this photo.

Made during a stroll down Soho (Part of Manhattan, New York)
Outfit: Normal (t-shirt, jeans, college jacket, sunglasses). Escort: Common (Brother Tom, producer David Jost). Hair: Jippieh! (I am happy not seeing the – hedgehod – I put my finger in a socket hairdo). Seems really cool, the boy. I can’t see the darkened eyes, finally a human look. I really like it.

After taking a better look and comparing the photos from stage Bill and Private Bill I wonder: Does Bill wear a wig when he is on stage? Yes, yes, I know, it’s a hairdo from Magdeburg and so, flick up, colouring and ready is the Kill-Bill, but I am kinda insecure. Admitted, he is wearing it down, that’s clear.

But beneath that base cap it doesn’t look like that big do – “Tokio Hotel” is moving on in New York, working there way down the list. Today a interview with Rolling Stone magazine, tomorrow the late night show “Conan O’Brien”, and Sunday a flight to L.A., on the 13th a concert in “Avalon” in Hollywood, on the 14th on to Canada, Toronto, Montreal. The first German concert since the surgery of Bill will be on the 13th of June in Westfallenhalle.

Update on Bill’s vocal condition: “Pleasant again, nevertheless, we are still closely watching it, that Bill will take his rest”, writes Jost to me.

Report Two

Washington Post: Tokio Hotel

Forget the New Kids on the Block reunion. Millions of teenage girls are freaking out over the hottest new boy band, Tokio Hotel. Of course, you’re forgiven if you’ve never heard of this four-piece German outfit, who’ve earned a U.S. fan base in the last few years thanks to concert clips available on YouTube. So when the band came to play its first American shows in February, fans lined up hours beforehand to catch a set of energetic, glammy emo-pop songs, many of which are on its English-language debut, “Scream.”

Tokio Hotel’s first record was performed in German, so it’s likely that English-speaking fans were more taken with the band members’ divergent physical appearances. Frontman Bill Kaulitz looks like a cross between a Japanese anime cartoon and Nikki Sixx; guitarist Tom Kaulitz (Bill’s twin brother) sports Axl Rose-style dreadlocks; drummer Gustav Schaefer resembles Spencer Pratt from MTV’s “The Hills”; bassist Georg Listing, strangely enough, could pass for Steely Dan’s Walter Becker in the ’70s.

But what about the music? For what it is — slickly produced, thoroughly modern rock songs with calm verses and seize-the-day choruses — it’s not terrible. Title track “Scream” is powered by crunchy guitar riffs, arena-ready beats and Bill Kaulitz’s adenoidal croon, while “Don’t Jump” is the kind of soaring, string-laden ballad that could work on the soundtrack to a big-budget action movie.

As a hyper-sensitive young man, Bill Kaulitz writes lyrics that often address breaking away from some vague apocalyptic nightmare, and he typically wants to take a special someone along for the journey. No doubt one of his female fans would accept the invitation. But, as is the ephemeral nature of the boy band, you have to wonder: Would she say yes five years from now?

Report Three

‘We are so excited we have fans here at all,’ says Bill Kaulitz, frontman for the German pop-rockers.

By James Montgomery, with reporting by Kim Stolz

According to their (rather rabid) fanbase, Tokio Hotel are:
A) “Certainly the most interesting up-and-coming music act in recent years” B) “The cutest Germans I’ve ever seen”
C) “F—ing amazing. … They showed me that music doesn’t have to be complex and full of technicalities for it to eat my f—ing heart alive”
D) “An amazingly talented group of young guys. And the twins are amazingly hot!”
E) “sooooooooo HOTT!”

That’s pretty hot(t). Of course, that enthusiasm is not shared by the other 98.9 percent of the planet, who probably only know Tokio Hotel as “that German band with the weird lead-singer chick” (if they know them at all).


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And therein lies the problem — or, more specifically, the challenge — facing Germany’s hottest pansexual pop-rockers: They are massively popular in their homeland (not to mention pretty much everywhere else in Europe), having sold more than 5 million albums, singles and DVDs in just more than three years, and they lord over a dedicated online army. Yet here in the States, they probably couldn’t get arrested, unless frontman (yeah, he’s a dude) Bill Kaulitz’s epically spiked mane violates some sort of zoning laws or something.

In short, Tokio Hotel have a legitimate shot at being the biggest rock act on the planet. All that’s standing in their way are the amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty of the United States.

“It’s really hard to get fans in another country, especially here, because America is so, so big, so it’s really hard to get known in this country,” Kaulitz said in a heavy accent. “We are so excited we have fans here at all. In America, we see a fan and it is like, ‘Oh, we are proud! We have a fan in America!’ ”

So with the hopes of increasing that fanbase here in the States, Tokio Hotel — including Kaulitz and his brother Tom on guitars, bassist Georg Listing and drummer Gustav Schäfer — have just released their first English-language album, Scream, which features re-recorded versions of tracks from their first-two German efforts, Schrei and Zimmer 483. Distributed here by Cherrytree (an Interscope imprint), the album is chock-full of crunchy riffs and self-flagellating lyrics, a cash cow clearly aimed at the Hot Topic set and their chain wallets.

And if it manages to score big, well, then the guys in Tokio Hotel will know that their hard work has paid off. After all, getting to be the biggest band on the planet isn’t easy.

“We had some help with [this album], because our English is not so good. For me, it was pretty hard to go into the studio and sing English for the first time, because I always sung in German, and we’ve been making music for seven years and it’s always been in German,” Kaulitz laughed. “So that took some time, and hopefully the fans will like it. It’s really important to us that everyone can understand our lyrics, so we said we’d try it. But also, the fans in America want to hear German songs … and last time we played here, we did two German songs [and] they sang the songs with us.”

Ah, yes, their fans here in America. They’re a small — but loyal (and vocal) — bunch, turning Times Square into a squealing mess Tuesday when the band appeared on “TRL” and packing Hollywood’s vaunted Roxy earlier this year for Tokio Hotel’s first U.S. show. Clearly, the seeds have been planted. And now, everyone involved with the band is hoping they’ll come into bloom.

“We expect great live shows here. We’ve played a few times here, and it was great. So now we want to play a tour,” Kaulitz said. “So we might come back and play a tour. I don’t know. We are going back to Europe to start writing a new record, and then we’ll do it in English. And then we want to come back.”