Durch den Monsun
Tokio Hotel
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 | abismo, precipicio | abisso, precipizio | abîme, précipice | abismo, precipício | afgrond |
| Ende | end | final | fine | fin | fim | einde |
| Ewigkeit | eternity | eternidad | eternità | éternité | eternidade | eeuwigheid |
This card holds 13 more words. You meet them when you play the song.
Adjectives
What this song teaches you
Level · B1
- Vocabulary words
- 16
- Adjectives
- 9
- Word combos
- 7
- Expressions
- 11
- Verb forms
- 25
- Quiz questions
- 35
More German songs at this level
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.