Let me first preface this post by saying that I'm a successful, respected, middle aged, divorced, father of 3. My oldest son(19) is attending college, daughter(18) is serving in the US Army and youngest son(17) is a senior in high school. We all love a wide variety of music and I tried with some success in getting them involved in music during their younger years. My oldest son is actually quite good with a guitar.
I had only heard of Tokio Hotel before December 3rd but knew nothing about them. I actually only recognized the name. Someone had sent me an email that had a link to a youtube video of an extremely young asian girl playing "Carry on my wayward son" on the keyboard. She literally knocked my socks off. There were more links from that video of other fantastically talented kids playing all kinds of instruments. One of these was a young girl playing drums. I watched her play to a few tunes and noticed that she had her own profile which led to 30-40 other songs she had played too. Upon scanning her list it became obvious that she had pretty good taste in music for someone so young. One of the bands she played to was Tokio Hotel. I quickly deducted that if the other artist she performed to were good then perhaps I should check into these Tokio Hotel fellas. This was around 7:00pm Wednesday December 3rd. It is now 10:30pm Sunday, December 7th. Every last free hour for the last 4 days has been filled with reading, watching, and listening to Tokio Hotel. I can't stop. The worst part of this is my timing. They finished their last US performance last night and are now back in Germany. I have never been so extremely overwhelmed by anything in my life. I think it might be understandable if they were an established group and had a long list of music to catch up with. Tokio Hotel does not. It is beyond me how I can watch and listen to slightly different versions of the same dozen or so songs and not be quickly bored with their volume of work. But I don't. It only makes me want more. This kind of thing doesn't happen to me. In all seriousness I'm the worst at staying interested in anything for very long and quickly grow bored. Again, with Tokio Hotel, they are the exception. I've tried to come up with why they have affected me to the point of starting this blog to express my feelings.
Tokio Hotel consists of 4 young guys from Germany. Yes you read that right, Germany. Identical twins Bill Kaulitz(Vocals) and Tom Kaulitz(Guitar) founded Tokio Hotel in 2001 along with Gustav Schäfer(Drums), and Georg Listing(Bass). They previously had a band called Devilish but it's recording contract with BMG was terminated. The band released their first German-language album, Schrei, as Tokio Hotel in 2005. Schrei sold more than half a million copies worldwide and spawned four top five singles in both Germany and Austria. In 2007, the band released their second German album Zimmer 483 and their first English album Scream which have combined album sales of over one million copies worldwide. Tokio Hotel has won many major awards on several continents and have an extremely loyal fan base.
The Tokio Hotel fan base has proven in it's short lifetime that it is a force that gets what they want. Tokio Hotel has managed though its fans to accomplish things I thought I would never see or hear of in my lifetime. This fan base pulled off one the most mind boggling feats in the last 60 years. They convinced the Israeli government to invite Tokio Hotel, a German group, into their country and sing in German WHILE their fans sang along in German with them. Beautiful. Members of Tokio Hotel have stated that several teachers have come to them both praising and scolding them for students now wanting to learn German instead of English. You need to remember, Tokio Hotel's albums up until Scream had all been in German. Tokio Hotel were building a worldwide fan base in countries that had no idea what they were singing. So what was the draw, the catch, the thing that drew these fans to Tokio Hotel?
Bill Kaulitz. Lead singer and front man for Tokio Hotel is something older people might recognize as a true front man. Wild hair, makeup, killer looks and commanding performer. Not unlike anything from the 60's through the 80's. His looks to older fans aren't as shocking or unconventional than they would be to someone born after 1990. In my day we had Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister, David Bowie, Kiss, hell about every group in the 80's for that matter looked actually more unconventional than Bill Kaulitz. What sets Bill Kaulitz apart from the pack is his likeability and that stop traffic smile. It's impossible to not like the guy if you take any time at all to watch him perform or listen to what he has to say. Bill is an intelligent, mannerly, thoughtful, witty, driven, focused human being. (Note: Bill talks 100 miles an hour. However it takes about 5 German words to get the same meaning as 1 English word.) You'll read that many think he's to feminine or possibly gay because of some of his actions and his makeup and hair. His identical twin Tom Kaulitz is a bit of a hound dog but in a way that only contrasts the differences between Bill and himself. I think to many are quick to judge on Bill's looks alone. Do you know how to quickly tell if someone has any intelligence at all or is a completely uneducated moron? The morons are the ones that have no rational or constructive comment to anything other than to call it "gay" because #1, they're jealous, or #2 they have no social skills to know how to fit in so they try to crash conversations and get any attention they can. Calling something or someone gay is not an opinion. It's either a judgment or a known fact. Any other reason is simply ignorance. And one more thing for you haters. Use some common sense. What kind of rational do you use to call a man gay because he looks like a girl? From what I can gather, gay is being attracted to the same sex because they are in fact the same sex. I am more apt to think Bill is going more for an anime look.
Anyone under 30 years old is to use to some rapper "smacking his bitch up" or "capp'n somebodys ass" to know what a good front man is. Then on the female side you have Britney. Great role model there for you. Let's have a couple of kids you can't take care of and worry more about your career. Last but not least you could have the brooding, depressing, "I'm all about the art" douchebag, suicidal Kurt Cobain type. As a parent are you really satisfied with that for your kids to listen too? Really?
Tokio Hotel could not have come at a more perfect time than now. With the current world situation I want good music from good people, music that I can sing along with, laugh and have a good time. You can have the music that is yelled and screamed at you, not with you, or music from drugged up, doped out, fan tossing, fan abusing, woman abusing, child abusing, tax evading, ungrateful, wanna be thugs. It's gotten old. I want to root for and support someone that appreciates being rooted for. Tokio Hotel are as humble and gracious as they could be. They are fun to watch both on and off the stage.
I can remember not so long ago that 4 lads from England changed the world. Maybe this time it will be 4 guys from Germany.
2007 EMA Award show performance. Bill and Tom were 17 at that time. If you don't get cold chills down your spine by the second "hey" then you have no soul.
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