Tokio Hotel (DE)

About

Also known as: Devilish, Tokyo Hotel, トキオ・ホテル, 東京ホテル

Tokio Hotel carved out a genuinely unusual place in pop rock history as the band that turned German language chart dominance into an international career. Formed in Magdeburg in 2001 by twin brothers Bill and Tom Kaulitz alongside bassist Georg Listing and drummer Gustav Schäfer, they originally went by Devilish before landing on a name that blended the German spelling of Tokyo with a nod to life on the road. Their 2005 debut Schrei sold over half a million copies worldwide and put four singles in the top five in Germany and Austria. The 2007 double release of Zimmer 483 and the English language Scream pushed combined sales past 2.5 million copies and earned them MTV Europe Music Awards recognition. At the 2008 MTV VMAs they became the first German act ever to win there, taking home Best New Artist. That run of MTV wins continued across Europe, Latin America and Japan over the following years. The band pivoted toward electropop and synth pop territory from 2014 onward, and in 2022 they released their album 2001, which nodded to the year they first got started. Total record sales across their career sit at over 10 million worldwide.