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Durch den Monsun — Tokio Hotel: German vocabulary & story · Verbomatico

Durch den Monsun

by Tokio Hotel

Language: German
Released: 2005
Genre: pop rock
Level: B1
Difficulty score: 750
Duration: 3:55

How to study this song

The card for “Durch den Monsun” is built from 50 study entries at B1: 16 German words, 9 adjectives and 25 verb forms. Begin with Abgrund, Ende and Ewigkeit: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. This one leans on its verbs: 25 distinct forms against 9 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level part of the list will already be familiar; the rest is what closes the gap.

The words of this song, in several languages

Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.

Vocabulary

DE	EN	ES	IT	FR	PT	NL
Abgrund	abyss, sheer drop (der)	abismo, precipicio	abisso, precipizio	abîme, précipice	abismo, precipício	De afgrond (der)

Adjectives

DE	EN	ES	IT	FR	PT	NL
einfach	simply, just	simplemente	semplicemente	tout simplement	simplesmente	gewoon, simpelweg

Verb forms

DE	EN	ES	IT	FR	PT	NL
öffnet sich	opens (reflexive: sich öffnen)	se abre	si apre	s'ouvre	abre-se	gaat open (wederkerend: sich öffnen)

What this song teaches you

Level · B1

Vocabulary words: 16
Adjectives: 9
Word combos: 7
Expressions: 11
Verb forms: 25
Quiz questions: 35

Background

About the song

«Durch den Monsun» is the song that turned four teenagers from Saxony-Anhalt into the biggest German pop phenomenon of the decade, and it did so in a matter of days. It was released on 15 August 2005 as the debut single of Tokio Hotel, on Island Records under Universal Music, and it entered the German singles chart at number fifteen on 20 August. Within days it was at number one, and it stayed there for five weeks. The four members of the band — the twin brothers Bill and Tom Kaulitz, the bassist Georg Listing and the drummer Gustav Schäfer — were fifteen years old at the time.

The group had existed since 2001 under a different name, Devilish, formed in Magdeburg when the Kaulitz twins were barely twelve and had already been performing together for two years. Their break came from television: Bill appeared on the talent show «Star Search» in 2003, and the producer Peter Hoffmann noticed him there. What followed was not a straight line to success. A first contract with Sony BMG was cancelled before anything was released, and only in 2005 did Universal sign the band, now renamed Tokio Hotel. The song that finally came out was credited to Bill Kaulitz together with Dave Roth, Patrick Benzner and David Jost, the production team that worked with them from the beginning; Roth, Jost, Hoffmann and Benzner produced the recording.

The song itself is a pop rock piece of just under four minutes built on one sustained image. The singer is shut in a room where nothing opens any more, where the last candle is burning down, and where the presence of the absent person fills the space and at the same time leaves it empty. Outside, dark clouds are gathering. From that closed room the song turns into a journey: the singer declares that he has to cross the monsoon, get behind the world, reach the end of time, keep going until the rain stops, walk into the storm and along the edge of a precipice. The refrain is not a complaint but a statement of intent, and the promise attached to it is that if the two of them ever walk that road together, everything will be all right.

In the second verse the imagery turns to the sky: a half moon sinks out of sight, and the singer wonders whether it was with the other person a moment earlier and whether it keeps the promises it makes. He is certain he can find her, he says he hears her name inside a hurricane, and he admits that believing any harder than he already does is beyond him. The bridge is the one moment where the fight becomes physical: there are powers behind a door, he will force his way through them and defeat them, and then they will lead him to her. The song ends by repeating the reassurance until it wears itself down to two words.

Did you know?

The band did not start out as Tokio Hotel. It was founded in Magdeburg in 2001 under the name Devilish, when the twins Bill and Tom Kaulitz were twelve and had already been playing together for two years; Georg Listing and Gustav Schäfer joined after seeing them perform. The new name paired a city the band liked with the word for the kind of building a touring group actually lives in.

The route to a record deal went through a television talent show. Bill Kaulitz took part in «Star Search» in 2003, and the producer Peter Hoffmann spotted him there. Even so, the first contract the group signed, with Sony BMG, was cancelled before any record came out. Universal signed them in 2005, and «Durch den Monsun» was the first thing the public heard.

An English version, «Monsoon», followed on 18 May 2007 and appeared on both «Scream» and «Room 483». Its video was filmed in Cape Town in May 2007 and put the band in a helicopter and then in free fall — a very different piece of imagery from the closed, waterlogged room of the German clip two years earlier.

For the fifteenth anniversary the band went back to the song and re-recorded it. «Durch den Monsun 2020» was released on 2 October 2020 and «Monsoon 2020» on 16 October, both with an electronic production that replaced the guitars of the original pop rock arrangement. The German re-recording later appeared on the album «2001», released on 18 November 2022 and named after the year the four of them first met.

In 2023 the producers Vize and Niklas Dee released a dance cover of the song with the singer Leony, in English, under the title «Monsoon» — evidence that eighteen years later the melody was still doing work on German radio without needing the band that wrote it.

Tokio Hotel became the first German band to win the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist, in September 2008. Bill Kaulitz has said since that he would not write this song the same way today, but that the band still plays it at every single show — which is roughly the definition of a debut single that never let go.

For a language learner the title is a grammar exercise in three words. «Durch» is one of the prepositions that always take the accusative, which is why the article in front of the noun is «den» and not «der»; and in the line the title comes from, the verb of movement is simply missing, because a German modal can carry a direction on its own without naming the action.