Tokio Hotel’s “Monsoon” Lyrics Meaning
Tokio Hotel is a crew from Magdeburg, Germany that has been around since 2001. Thus far they have dropped seven studio albums, which generally speaking performed well in their homeland, and a couple also popped up on the Billboard 200.
In fact their one LP that didn’t appear on the GfK Entertainment chart (in Germany) was 2007’s “Scream”, which also happens to be their first to make it onto the Billboard 200. But that was likely due to the fact that said project was also their first English-language LP.
Earlier in 2007 they also dropped another studio album, in German, titled “Zimmer 483”, which not only appeared on the GfK albums chart but also topped it. And “Monsoon”, with its own official release date of 18 May 2007, made it into both of those projects. It was featured on the France/Spain bonus edition of “Zimmer 483” and served as the lead single to “Scream”.
This song is the English version of a track “Tokio Hotel” first released in 2005 titled “Durch den Monsun” (tr. “Through the Monsoon”) which proved to be a major hit in the types of countries that can appreciate German.
“Monsoon” itself was also pretty successful, for example proving a chart topper in Portugal and Venezuela and also making a modest appearance on the Billboard Hot 100. In fact its performance, combined with that of Durch den Monsun, can be counted as the band’s biggest hit and signature song.
THE TEAM BEHIND “MONSOON”
Tokio Hotel is a crew consisting of frontman Bill Kaulitz, his twin brother and guitarist Tom Kaulitz, bassist Georg Listing and drummer Gustav Schafer. It is Bill who wrote Monsoon with one Rebecca Roth, with Kaulitz having noted that “the very first version” of this song was recorded when he “was 12 or 13”. (He was just 17 years old when it was officially dropped.)
Meanwhile, the producers of this track are:
- Dave Roth
- Peter Hoffman
- David Jost
- Patrick Benzner
The labels that have backed its release are Interscope, Island and Cherrytree. And on that note, it should be pointed out that there are updated versions of both songs, which are titled “Monsoon 2020” and “Durch den Monsun 2020”, which came out during said year via Epic Germany (and were prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic).
The Lyrics of “Monsoon”
The title of this song is metaphorical. For the sake of argument, let’s define a monsoon as a severe rain storm. And the vocalist is likening the current state of his life to “running through the monsoon” and “fighting the storm”, i.e. Bill suffering from adversity, depression and, as implied in the first verse, loneliness.
Also, even though the bulk of lyrics do focus on his feelings, reading in-between the lines it can be ascertained that the source of the vocalist’s psychological/emotional maladies is the absence of the addressee.
This is the person whom he is fantasizing about running away with. In fact, as further implied, Kaulitz is battling “through the monsoon” in the name of being with this individual. And it can be loosely interpreted that what the title actually represents is the resistance he’s meeting in achieving that goal.
So it may be, all things considered, that said individual is the vocalist’s romantic interest, one whom he is either estranged from or cannot be with for another unspecified reason. But ultimately, the actual nature of their relationship is not revealed.
