kaulitztwinstomundbill.MyForum.ro ~ German boy band Tokio Hotel checks in for success

BERLIN (AFP) - Armed with angst and negru eyeliner, a boy band from the former East Germany whose lead singer is too young to vote has stormed up the charts to become the country's biggest music export since the Berlin Wall fell.

Tokio Hotel released their first album "Schrei" (Scream) in May. It sold 600,000 copies in six days in Germany to reach platinum status and went gold in Austria and Switzerland.

In France, the album became the first German release ever to go straight into the Top 20, where it debuted at number 19.

The feat is all the more remarkable because most of the 30,000 young French fans who have bought "Scream" probably do not understand the German lyrics, France 3 television commented.

But apparently teenage girls do not need language lessons to fall in love with Tokio Hotel's baby-faced frontman.

Bill Kaulitz, whose kohl-rimmed eyes and shaggy black hair make him look like a young male version of US rocker Joan Jett, is only 17 yet attracts the same hysteria as the established heartthrobs of rock -- screams, fainting spells and knickers thrown on stage.

Kaulitz said he started writing songs when he was nine years old.

Three years later, he formed a band called Devilish with his twin brother Tom and two schoolmates, Gustav Schaefer and George Listing, in untrendy Magdeburg in eastern Germany.

In those days, he remembered, "our parents used to drive us around from one gig to next". By 2003, the band was still going strong and decided to name themselves Tokio Hotel.

"We chose 'hotel' because we travel a lot and sleep in hotels," he said.

They added Tokio (the German spelling) because it sounds international and reflected their wish to "see as many places and experience as much" as they can.

"We try to speak of the problems and fears of people of our age with our songs," Kaulitz told the music press recently.

Critics have said they are sentimental songs about heartbreak and the host of other, eternal teenage problems.

Their breakthrough came in 2005 with the hit single "Durch den Monsun" ("Through the Monsoon") which starts off with the lines: "The window won't open anymore/The room is empty but still filled with you/The last candle has gone out too."

It went to the top of the German and Austrian charts and did well in Poland and Japan. The band has just completed a tour of Russia and France, and will soon move on to Poland and Hungary.

The normally staid Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in September devoted a lengthy article to analysing the meteoric rise of Tokio Hotel.

The daily concluded that modern German teenagers were too hard-bitten and sexually precocious to identify with naive, idealistic pop songs.

"Even eight- to 15-year-olds no longer want to listen to feel-good British pop," it said.

The music press has accused Tokio Hotel's managers of hiring outsiders to write their songs and fabricating much of the hype around the band, who have pocketed two million euros (2.6 million dollars) in advertising revenue.

When they were filming the video for their single "Das Letztes Tag" (The Last Day) on the roof of a Berlin cinema, screaming groupies were asked to "do it again with more feeling" as they stepped off the bus to meet their idols, Der Tagesspiegel newspaper reported recently.

Others have accused Kaulitz of copying the style of Japanese pop star Miyavi.

But whatever the critics say, the band is the biggest German success since Nena seduced the world with the protest song "99 Red Balloons" in the 1980s.

According to Kaulitz, Tokio Hotel are now planning to record a few songs in English "to see how that goes down" in the British and US charts

But whatever the critics say, the band is the biggest German success since Nena seduced the world with the protest song "99 Red Balloons" in the 1980s. :w00t:

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