Login / RegisterThere's something lost in translation on Tokio Hotel's Humanoid
Tokio Hotel
Humanoid (Universal)
I’ll admit to a certain guilty-pleasure interest in Tokio Hotel, but it’s for almost entirely sentimental reasons. When my wife and I were on our honeymoon in Spain back in the summer of 2005, we would sometimes put MTV Europe on in our hotel room. Unlike the North American versions of MTV, the European ones still show music videos, although they never seem to have more than five in rotation at any one time. The big hits while we were there? Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone”, “La Camisa Negra” by Juanes, “Maria” by US5, Shakira’s “La Tortura”, and “Durch den Monsun” by Germany’s Tokio Hotel.
The song was a catchy bit of decidedly retro-leaning angst-rock, like Nirvana with the edges sanded off, and it was sung by an androgynous pixie with long black bangs combed down over his left eye. That was then 15-year-old Bill Kaulitz, backed by his dreadlocked twin brother Tom on guitar, along with the two guys no one really cares about (bassist Georg Listing and drummer Gustav Schí¤fer, just in case anyone does).
For a couple of years, Tokio Hotel was our little secret. Then, in 2007, someone in a suit decided that it was time for the band to crack the English-speaking market. This led to the release of Scream, which featured English versions of songs from Tokio Hotel’s first two albums, Schrei and Zimmer 483. And that’s when the group’s appeal began to wear thin. Bill’s voice had changed, losing some of its adolescent charm. What’s worse, he was now singing in translation, which not only didn’t sound as good, but also revealed that we were better off not knowing what he was saying.
That holds true for the English version of the new Tokio Hotel album, Humanoid, which kicks off with “There are days when you feel so small/And you know you could be so tall.” I don’t know what those lines from “Noise” are in der Deutschen sprache, but it’s got to be better than that, nein?
Lost-in-translation issues aside, the main problem with Humanoid is that it largely dispenses with the notion of Tokio Hotel as a rock band. The group’s regular producer (and manager and cowriter) David Jost recruited hit-making team the Matrix, who gave a couple of the songs a pop sheen, complete with layers of keyboards and programming, not to mention Auto-Tune and vocoders. Tokio Hotel is in there somewhere, but it’s hard to tell exactly where when listening to the electro-disco verses of “Dogs Unleashed” or the machine-tooled emo-pop of “Automatic”. The biggest hint that most of the ideas on display were generated by people outside of the band is the fact that the beat and main guitar riff of “Human Connect to Human” are lifted directly from Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”. Not to get all holier-than-thou, but that really is an unforgivable musical sin.
It’s not all bad news, though. Bill Kaulitz has grown into his voice, and he hits it out of the park on the album’s many stadium-sized choruses. That includes the one on “Humanoid”, a rocker with a metallic guitar riff beefy enough to cut through all the gloss. This suggests that Tokio Hotel can still rock out when it needs to, and that’s a language that anyone can understand.
Download This: “Humanoid”
That said, the English lyrics on Humanoid shine. In fact, many people I know who have been staunchly "German Only!!!" prefer many songs here in English, which shows, to me, that the band has evolved in their language and music skills.
Also of note, the Kaulitz twins co-produced every song on this album, Tom Kaulitz has added piano to his skills and will perform in concert on piano. As for Bill's new soaring voice, I hope everyone will check it out just to hear the amazing growth and strides he has taken since his surgery last year.
He has trained and trained and honed his voice to new levels.
To anyone who desires further info, I invited you to the Official Tokio Hotel Fanclub of the United States at http://www.tokiohotelamerica.com
We are always glad to provide any information you seek and we are building the liner notes onto our content as we speak.
I support your pick of Humanoid as the top track on the album.
April,
Dogs Unleashed is one of the songs that is much darker in German. It's actually a response to the stalkers that they've had to deal with in the past year--just set to dance music. :)
As for some things being lost in translation, it is true: the lyrics of Noise and a couple other songs are, in my opinion, better in German, but their lyrical style has still improved incredibly far. I think Komm, Kampf der Liebe, and Hey Du could have stayed in German because a lot of the science fiction influences in them didn't translate, but I can't say that I'm disappointed with any of the English lyrics. Not all were written the same way: some were translated, some were written in parallel, some were written entirely separately. In fact, some were actually written rather cleverly: compare Human Connect to Human to Menschen Suchen Menschen, and you'll find that the songs were written not as duplicates, but in fact as the inverse of each other, connected by the same base concept. Hey Du/Hey You is similar. There's far more depth to this album and the translations than there was on Scream, where each song was translated one on one and many of the lyrics were awkward and a bit silly.
I think you ought to listen to Schrei and Zimmer again and then go back to Humanoid and listen to it thoroughly. Turn up the volume, close your eyes, forget the lyrics, and just listen to the music. Notice how claustrophobic, almost, Zimmer sounds next to Humanoid. There are no driving beats, no myriad of sounds [synthetic or otherwise], no extensive instrumental breaks, no layered guitars, no diverse and complex influences and styles. Zimmer is so straight-foward and almost plain next to Humanoid---I don't think it's easy to grasp how much Tokio Hotel has progressed and evolved until you look at their older work. Humanoid is really an album to be proud of---I'm proud of them and Tokio Hotel should be proud as well. I hope that reading this will help you see Humanoid differently because I want everyone to be able to enjoy it. Maybe they borrowed a little heavily from Depeche Mode, maybe it's not patent rock music, maybe the lyrics will never be the same as in German, but it's a damn good album nonetheless.
The big name producer/songwriters were all on board because they all recognize the incredible potential of Tokio Hotel. The band jumped at the chance to work with them because they have always been smart when it comes to working with the people who they can learn the most from. Their first album in English, Scream, taught them that a Top 5 debut on Billboard's Rock charts is only good enough to barely slip into the Top 40 of the Billboard 200. So they went more for what American kids are listening to right now. Underneath the tricked up bells and whistles on Automatic, however, is a beautiful Rock lament that fully emerges when they do a live acoustic version.
Nothing is certain in the Music business but I can't wait until they finally DO figure themselves out. I think it will probably take another five years but they truly have a chance to be one of the best bands of their generation. The depths of emotion their music is capable of taking so many people of all ages to is astounding. That speaks the loudest to me.
Time will tell as it always does.
I'm a pretty big fan of Scream, but I thought that Humaniod is actually really damn good. The first time I heard the autotune I was thinking "Noo!", but it keeps with the theme of the album and there are just a heap of great songs in there.
For me, Tokio Hotel's lyrics and Bill through his own image, brings a message of doing what you want to do, regardless of what everyone else thinks, so it's understandable that there would be a lot of people that really don't like them, as you will always piss people off when you do things your own way. But that is what is so great about them for me: They are different, and their message to everyone else is to be different too.
People look at them and dismiss them as a superficial band, but they are actually really talented, and Bill's voice is getting even better than it was before. And they're still really young!
There aren't a lot of fans in my category (29 y/o male), and I totally understand other guys that just don't get the appeal of the band. But what can I say... I loved Scream, and I love the new album even more. Good work TH!!
I love the album btw
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