Tokio Hotel are the few real world stars made in Germany, say, the Scorpions. The four have been in business for more than 20 years (and yet only in early 30). It is high time to play a selection of songs from your own oeuvre. An oeuvre that started in the province of Saxony-Anhalt of the Nuller years.
The twins Bill and Tom Kaulitz were so stylish in sound and look as a twelve -year -old that some Tokyo Hotel still consider a casting product to this day. In fact, they wrote their songs together with the bassist Georg Listing and the drummer Gustav Schäfer themselves before discovering universal and in 2005 with “through the MONSUN” megastars.
1. “Let’s get out here” (2005)
Bill Kaulitz: The song has a message similar to “Drive with me (4 × 4)” with a power club: We wanted to live our dream at the time. Of course that was snotty. When we recorded the number, I was twelve. But it is still like this: Germany doesn’t need full idiots! (laughs) I would say that you could re-release.
Do you still know who you meant with the lines “Germany needs a superstar / and no idiots”?
Bill: Back then it started with casting shows, and that was a swipe. But to be honest, I was at a casting myself and flew out in the first round.
Georg Listing: We were often said that we were a casting band – and that was against it. To say: Nah, we have been a band since 2001, i.e. years before “through the Monsun”.
2. “Cry” (2005)
Bill: Our first record has turned to get away from our world at the time, it was about a liberation from school and parents. We wanted to arrest, polarize.
To what extent did your home town of Loitsche play a role near Magdeburg?
Bill: I have the feeling that this was the engine for everything, the inspiration for the music. Get out, out, out of these Nazi villages. As a teenager, we were afraid of death to climb into the school bus as we looked. Sure, we didn’t make it easy either. The diligence, the energy and love we put in the band comes from how we grew up.
Georg, how was it for Gustav and you to experience how the twins were target of hostility?
Georg: In the time before the breakthrough, it was all about getting the school around every day and then hanging together as soon as possible in the rehearsal room. We have always understood ourselves as a community and as brothers who protect each other.
How did you deal with the pressure to expect that was on “scream” after the mega hit “through the Monsun”?
Bill: Actually, “cry” should be the first single! But then the girlfriend of our former A&R listened to all the songs in the car on cassette and said spontaneously: “Oh, I think the most beautiful!” And because he was so in love, he had her decided.
Georg: That is why we were relatively confident at the time with “cry” because it was the number that we wanted to bring out first, and we thought: “If, through the monsoon ‘, it is waiting for you until you hear!” (Both laugh)
How funny that your hit was a random decision due to falling in love.
Bill: Total! At that time we played a live set in the studio in front of all record companies, and “through the Monsun” really nobody really wanted. And when he was chosen at the last second, you didn’t spend as much money on the music video because everyone thought: “The real bang, it is still coming!”
3. “Humanoid” (2009)
You can hear you sing here: “Against the rules, against power / against everything, against everything / between the worlds / I’m caught”.
Bill: Outside of the outsider is our thing! (laughs) At that time we had the feeling that we are competing with ourselves like children’s stars who are always compared with their work from back then. The song was a liberation: we can change.
4. “Masquerade” (2014)
Bill: At Kings of Suburbia, Tom and I started producing themselves and taking the musical back into their hands. We had just started building a studio in our house in La. Kings of Suburbia was an important record for us to recharge and remember self -confidence: we can write songs alone again.
That was very central to you from the beginning?
Bill: Total! In our second and third album, however, it was exploited that we no longer have time to go to the studio ourselves.
Georg: And if we got home from the tour at some point, we approached us: “In two weeks we will hand over the new album – do we want to?”
5. “We never die out” (2007)
Bill: How cool, that was the only song that we wrote completely alone for the second record! No matter what happens around us, we will never separate – that was our message to ourselves at the time.
Georg: A mutual promise.
6. “Forgotten children” (2007)
I noticed the lyrics: “The street becomes tomb / the traces are blurred / There was no search / cold is the night”.
Bill: I still know that my mother often thought: “When people hear what texts wrote to her, I get trouble with school! They send psychologists home!” I was just a huge fan of German music, I heard a lot of Nena back then, and because she was always political, I always wanted to make music with a statement.
How is it to hear such a song as an adult now?
Georg: I think the song is more topical than ever. Compared to today, peace, joy, pancakes were. There has probably never been a more relevant time for this song than now. I haven’t heard it for 100 years! Nice that you choose that.
7. “Dream Machine” (2017)
Bill: That was the most important album in our career. With this song we stood there after more than ten years without our producers and were out of our old panel deal. Everyone said: “Ha, now you have to see how you can cope without us!” We were like tortured dance bears that had been whipped for years. Suddenly we were left by everyone, but we also wanted that to break away from the chains.
For Dream Machine we entrench ourselves in the studio, not to leave anyone, but only wanted to write and produce everything for four. And it was important to realize this dream that we can do it without everyone else: that was our Dream Machine.
And it was also true: you don’t need all the people who pull on you.
Bill: Exactly, and that was our hottest record, I have to say! (laughs)
The me blind date with Tokio Hotel was published in the ME output 12/22.