Tokio Hotel – 'Encore' review: nostalgia, parties and plenty of Auto-Tune
The Magdeburg band's seventh album gave them their best chart placing in twelve years. Critics are less excited – and their European tour is under way.
Graphic: TERRA WORLD NEWS (own graphic based on the sources listed)
Single video: YouTube · Tokio Hotel · youtube.com
Single: Dye My Hair
Tokio Hotel released their seventh album 'Encore' via Believe on 16 October, four years after their previous studio album. The band describe it as a bridge between nostalgia and evolution; singles such as 'Memory Lane' and 'Without You' came out beforehand. 'Encore' entered the Official German Albums Chart at number 3, the band's best placing in twelve years. Since 28 October, Bill and Tom Kaulitz, Georg Listing and Gustav Schäfer have been on a European tour of 17 concerts running until 23 November in Madrid, including Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna.
The reviews are lukewarm. laut.de writer Rinko Heidrich calls the album a 'synthetic product' and 'perfect influencer marketing': Bill Kaulitz lacks the voice, he writes, with Auto-Tune, doubling and reverb covering up weaknesses. 'Dye My Hair' is a wearily delivered heartbreak song, and the saxophone on 'Terminal 1' is 'magnificently misplaced'. He singles out the acoustic 'Wanderlust' as a bright spot. Berliner Zeitung sums up the album's themes as drug highs, parties and suppressed heartache.
The video is the official music video for 'Dye My Hair' from Tokio Hotel's YouTube channel.
Sources
- laut.de – Tokio Hotel: „Encore“, Kritik von Rinko Heidrich (Oktober 2026)
- Berliner Zeitung – Albumkritik: Tokio Hotel „Encore“, von Stefan Hochgesand (16.10.2026)
- Melodic Magazine – Tokio Hotel gears up for new album with single “Without You” (19.08.2026)
- Offizielle Deutsche Charts – Tate McRae verdrängt Taylor Swift, Ski Aggu in Album-Charts vorne (23.10.2026)
- antiMusic – Tokio Hotel announce new album with Memory Lane video (27.05.2026)