Berlin Hotel

Snotty Teenage band from the past with alternative rock fleur

Music experts use to compare some artists to meteors - they light up the sky at night, fly across it, obscuring the stars, and vanish in the morning glow. Their presence was short but bright. For sure, this is a true statement for Tokio Hotel.

I've seen them for the first time in 2005 on MTV using normal television. The Internet just started during that time, and I used to buy a card for accessing 100 MB of data per month. But TV was firing,g and I used to watch MTV sometimes. This way I met many interesting musicians, including Coldplay and Tokio Hotel.

Of course, they were rotating their most popular song - Durch Den Monsun. Imagine the music video with faded colors, starting with rocky looking (too) young guy, who snuffs out a black candle which he holds in his hands with black coloured nails. Wow, it was too much of dark emo vibes even back then. And I couldn't stop looking and listening even though. At the end of video, there was a catharsis by rain starting to fall from the sky to these young guys playing wet guitars with messed up wet hair. All elements of a good teenage vibe.

Songs are written in Deutsch, so I didn't get a thing. But come on, it's pretty obvious something about love, of breaking up, or parents' problems, rebellion... put your best topic from teenage time there. But there was something else. They kinda knew how to do it in a good way. I'm listening to this song right now, and it is still good! I feel the guitar, which is interesting, but not annoying. I hear a good bass rhythm. And not too bad voice. Yeah, it's a very childish voice, with a little fleur of smoked up life experience.

It is important to say that it was very shameful to officially say that you liked or even listened to Tokio Hotel among my friends during that time. Shameful, because it was neither true rock nor heavy metal, nor weird Japanese rock. Nothing that can give you at least a little bit of pride. Just snotty pop from German youngsters. So when I bought their CD, I didn't tell anyone. Interestingly, I somehow managed to buy it in the center of Berlin during a bus trip across Europe with my parents. I entered the music store and saw that CD - vivid orange cover with a deep black CD surface. I have not seen anything like this before, not after. Just a velvet black surface! Amazing! I had very little cash, no cards, very entry-level English, so my conversation with the shop assistant was short and weird. Probably I was afraid to seem not willing to buy it, that's why I got it for 20 euros. The next day, I got another 3 random CDs on sale for 1 euro!

But the truth is - they are indeed very talented. Even if you have not even heard about them at all before this very moment. The band was started by 2 tween brothers, Tom and Bill Kaulitz, from Leipzig in 2001. They were 12! Of course, not everything was bright and shiny in their life. There was parent's divorce, which, though, led their mom to a new guy, who was a rock musician and taught Tom to play guitar. They played their own songs in a local pub. They produced the first album by themselves, burned 300 copies of it on a computer, and sold them in the pub! They got noticed by a famous music producer, and a new life began - label, contract, more music contests, videos, and popularity. Tough life...

They shone bright until the singer's voice changed (hello, Robertino Loretti). With the voice change, they also changed a style, moved more into synth pop... but the sparkle has gone. Their time to shine was short but very bright. Maybe, there won't be a lot of people who know them like people know Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. And I guess, it was very hard for them to face the decline of global popularity. But at the same time, there will always be a bunch of people who grew up with them and experienced their first exciting or frightening feelings with their songs. These songs would always be a ticket to those moments.