|
Who's Online |
|
We have 6 guests and 4 members online |
|
|
Return, Press, Portrait Magazine, Teen Vogue |
|
Monday, 04 August 2008 |
Return:
Right, so I've taken my holiday and will no be back to updating you as fully as possible on all Tokio Hotel news. Hopefully you survived the week without me!
Press:
OLIVER TANSON® conducted an interview with Tokio Hotel and took some very exclusive pictures! You can listen to a small audio-snippet and check out the gallery at the site !
Goethe Review: Tokio Hotel take over the world:
In February 2008 the city of New York was once again invaded by hordes of screaming girls and it could mean only one thing – another boy band was in town. This time however there was something different about the whole thing – all the slogans and declarations of love on the T-shirts and posters were not in English, but in German. “Bill, ess briiingt miiiisch oummm,” for example, (“Bill, it’s gonna kill me”) as the line from one of the band’s hits goes. This was also the refrain sung by most of the female fans at the Tokio Hotel gig at the Fillmore NY club – New York’s legendary concert venue that in the past has seen fans reeling in the aisles to such musical greats as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
After taking Europe by storm the band went stateside and – to everybody’s amazement – managed to conquer America, too. At first the media back home in Germany were in some cases more amused than impressed, they did try however to find an explanation for the phenomenon. How could it be that four young guys – in fact, barely-of-age guys – from the town of Magdeburg in eastern Germany had now become icons of global youth culture, or even sex symbols?
Without doubt their look most definitely played a crucial role. The lead singer, Bill, has spiky hair like a porcupine, eyes lined with kohl and he is dressed like a punk, which makes him look like one of those Japanese manga figures. The guitarist, Tom, Bill’s identical twin brother, goes more for shaggy Rasta dreadlocks and the baggy hip-hop look. Fan forums are equally as obsessed with the way the brothers look as they are with the music.
Of course, there is never success without money. Tokio Hotel’s label, Universal, is one of the biggest on the music scene and has spared neither effort nor expense to market the quartet to a young audience via websites, publicity campaigns and magazines. This however is not enough to explain their success, especially when you think that only one tenth of all performing artists manage to bring home a profit for their recording companies. Promoting a new act, as we see, can quite definitely involve quite a few risks, as one of the business’s top dogs found out to its dismay – SonyBMG had signed on Tokio Hotel, but terminated their contract just before their breakthrough in 2005.
By word of mouth on new grapevines
Tokio Hotel is über amazing. Fan’s scribbling in New York. Another vital publicity factor these days is the effect of internet platforms like YouTube and MySpace that enable new trends to spread like wildfire. It is a form of the classic word-of-mouth advertising that uses different channels to not only overcome international barriers, but also linguistic ones. This is in fact what makes the success of Tokio Hotel so surprising – most of the lyrics they sing are in German.
Before Tokio Hotel there were of course other German success stories. Kraftwerk, for example, who, with their song Autobahn, pioneered the myth of fast-lane freedom for fast-lane individuals. Nina Hagen is still a well-known face in the USA, famous for her outrageous performances; the same with Nena who managed get to number two in the US charts in 1983 with her song 99 Red Balloons. Since the end of the 1990s Rammstein has been the most successful musical export in German. With their explosive stage show, brute-force arrangements and their sometimes controversial lyrics the group promotes the cliché of the remorseless, sinister Teuton.
German graffiti in Rome
Rasta dreadlocks and hip-hop clothes. Tokio Hotel’s guitarist, Tom Kaulitz. Tokio Hotel have also pulled off another great feat – they have triggered a huge, new surge of interest in the German language. “German is sexy,” as two female fans at the concert in New York told the German magazine, Focus. “Young Americans and Canadians have started learning German so that they can understand the lyrics better,” says Wolfram Hermann of the Goethe-Institut in Boston. “There has been a huge response,” confirms his colleague in Rome, Elisa Costa. In Italy ten per cent more teenagers between the ages of 11 and 16 have enrolled in German courses. In France, according to information published in the German news magazine, Spiegel, it as many as 25 per cent. On the institute’s website in Italy there was a competition in which you could win 100 Tokio Hotel concert tickets – in two weeks 5,000 people took part in it. They had to answer the questions in German. On the Rome underground graffiti has now appeared exalting the names of the band members and proclaiming in German messages like “ich liebe dich” (I love you) or “du bist mein Engel” (You are my angel).
Another clear sign of the group’s potential is the fact that T-shirts, posters and biographies are available all over the place, whether you are in Palermo or Istanbul, New York or Paris. Tokio Hotel has furthermore paved the way for other young German bands to make it in a big way, for example, Cinema Bizarre or Nevada Tan. This is the reason why branches of the Goethe-Institut in Europe and in North America are planning further online campaigns and cooperation projects with both schools and the press to enhance the spread of the German language.
The aim here is to achieve what Hesse, Goethe and Grass, etc, did not quite manage to do. The fans at the Fillmore NY concert all sang in unison “Wir häm unns toadgeliiebt” (We’ve loved ourselves to death) from the Tokio Hotel song, Loved To Death. It might not sound quite as elegant as Goethe’s Wayfarer’s Night Song, “In allen Wipfeln spürest du kaum einen Hauch” (In all the treetops you feel hardly a breath of air) – maybe that is the reason why the quality press and state institutions were initially so reluctant to jump on the Tokio Hotel bandwagon. Can a band with such bizarre hairstyles and lyrics oozing with the Weltschmerz of youth represent a country that is respected as the world’s top exporting nation?
Gute Besserung (Get well soon!). Tokio Hotel fans in Moscow. Foto/Copyright: Maria PawlowaThe answer lies with the fans. Not just in Germany, but everywhere the fans camp out for days in all kinds of weather in the hope of getting the best concert tickets – be it in Geneva, Tel Aviv or Moscow. It is hard to put into a nutshell why there is so much enthusiasm for Tokio Hotel. One thing is for sure – they have certainly managed to introduce the world to a new image of Germany – one that is young, surprising and sexy.
Tu magazine has put Tokio Hotel on their front cover - they're a Mexican magazine!
This doesn't do anything for rumours that Tokio Hotel are visiting South America this month whilst on the continent!
Portrait Magazine:
Tokio Hotel got the 2nd place on the "top 30 under 30" by Portrait Magazine. Have a look over here. The first place went to the cast of Twilight.
On Portrait Magazine there was also a contest to choose the site of the month (August); the winner was TH fansite Tokio Hotel Canada. Have a look here.
Again, on Portrait Magazine there was another contest called "Tokio Hotel Wallpaper Challenge". You can see the winners here and also the editor's pick.
Read a new Tokio Hotel over at Portrait Magazine here.
Teen Vogue Magazine:
America meet Tokio Hotel. The gender-bending emo-pop rockers are headed up by eighteen-year-old German twins Bill and Tom Kaulitz, whose looks are identical but whose styles couldn’t be more different. “We hate people telling us to wear this and that,” says guitarist Tom, who favors dreads, baggy jeans, and a carefully skewed baseball cap. “Sometimes at a photo shoot they try to style this hair,” singer Bill says, pointing to his hedgehog-like coiffure, “but no one knows how.” His secret? “Hair spray. A lot.” Between the hair and emotive vocals–not to mention the piercings, tattoos, and rock-chic clothes–it’s easy to see how Bill has become the object of many a teenage crush. And despite their varied senses of style, the Kaulitzes say their twin telepathy provides a shared vision of their goals for the future. “Be successful in America!” Tom says. Adds Bill, with a grin: “And play in Tokyo.”
Wonder Twins
Having already sold more than 5 million albums worldwide, Tokio Hotel is poised to conquer America with their grunge-inflected emo rock (and a whole lot of extra-hold product).
 Add as favourites (0) |  Quote this article on your site | Views: 840
1. Written by Lizzie McCready, on 04-08-2008 14:49
i need to start a telepathy triangle with them..and get come to the UK in there somewhere lol
lots to read XD danke!
xxx |
2. Written by Lauren, on 04-08-2008 20:21
LAINA NOT LAUREN!!!
wow what an update!!
THANKS!!!!
and i hope u had a good holiday! |
3. Written by Yaz, on 05-08-2008 01:18
Hope u had a nice holiday =]
Thanks for the update
|
|
- Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article.
- Personal verbal attacks will be deleted.
- Please don't use comments to plug your web site. Such material will be removed.
- No swearing will be tolerated.
- If you enter the wrong secirity code, refresh the page.
|
Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.6
AkoComment © Copyright 2004 by Arthur Konze - www.mamboportal.com
All right reserved |
|
News 
Comments (3)
