Lacrimosa is a duo led by German Tilo Wolff, the main composer, and Finnish Anne Nurmi, currently based in Switzerland, but originally from Germany. Lacrimosa's musical genre originally was Dark Wave or rather downright gothic rock. Since 1993, their style has shifted much more towards, but gothic metal being mixed in to their typical darkwave sound. Their current musical style mixes gothic rock and heavy metal along with violin, trumpet and more classical instruments, although their musical development throughout the years has also led to changes in instrumentation. Lacrimosa's lyrics are written almost exclusively in German, although since the 1995 album Inferno every album has featured one or two songs in English, generally written by Anne Nurmi. Finnish has also appeared in the spoken intro to two songs ("Schakal" on Inferno and "The Turning Point" on Elodia) and on a bonus track in a limited edition release of Fassade called Vankina. Their lyrics are mainly about loneliness, sadness, darkness, despair and love.
Tokio Hotel is a pop rock band from Germany, founded in 2001 by singer Bill Kaulitz, guitarist Tom Kaulitz, drummer Gustav Schäfer and bassist Georg Listing. The quartet have scored four number one singles and have released three number one albums in their native country, selling nearly 5 million CDs and DVDs there. After recording an unreleased demo-CD under the name "Devilish" and having their contract with Sony BMG Germany terminated, the band released their first German-language album, Schrei, as Tokio Hotel on Universal Music Germany in 2005. Schrei sold more than half a million copies worldwide and spawned four top five singles in both Germany and Austria. In 2007, the band released their second German album Zimmer 483 and their first English album Scream which have combined album sales of over one million copies worldwide and helped win the band their first MTV Europe Music Award for Best InterAct. The former, Zimmer 483, spawned three top five singles in Germany while the latter, Scream, spawned two singles that reached the top twenty in new territories such as France, Portugal, Spain and Italy. In September 2008, they won in the US their first MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. In October 2008, they won four awards including Best International Artist and Song of the year at Los Premios MTV Latinoamérica held in Mexico. Tokio Hotel became the first German band ever to win an award at the MTV VMAs and also at the MTV Latin America Awards. They also picked up the Headliner award at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2008 held in Liverpool on November 6, 2008 and the Award for Best Group on November 5, 2009 at the MTV Europe Music Award held in Berlin. They won an Award for Best World Stage Performance on November 7, 2010 at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Madrid.
Black Kids is an American indie pop band from Jacksonville, Florida. The band's debut EP, Wizard of Ahhhs, received favorable critical response in 2007, and was followed by the Partie Traumatic album, which debuted at #5 on the UK Albums Chart in July 2008.
They are currently writing songs for their second album. The band played new songs on their Mini-Tour along Florida as seen on their setlist. The new songs are possible related or at least contain the words 'Trippin', 'Smokes', 'Castles', 'Rude Boys' and 'Weird Hearts'.
Christina Perri is an American singer and songwriter from Philadelphia. Her song "Jar of Hearts" charted in the United States after it was featured on the Fox television show So You Think You Can Dance in 2010. Rolling Stone named her the "Band of the Week" on October 26, 2010. On May 10, 2011, Perri's "Jar of Hearts" was featured on Glee (Season 2, Episode 20 "Prom Queen").
Perri's debut album is titled Lovestrong. and was released on May 10, 2011. It follows the release of "Arms", its lead single, released on March 15.
T.M.Revolution (TMR), which stands for "Takanori Makes Revolution" (貴教が革命を起こす) although the name stems from the famous 80s pop electronic band TM Network. Despite most of his songs being written by Akio Inoue and composed/arranged by Daisuke Asakura (also TMR’s former producer), T.M.Revolution is considered Nishikawa’s solo project.
Nishikawa debuted as TMR with the release of his first single "Dokusai (Monopolize)" (独裁 -monopolize-?) in May 1996. Later that year, his third single "Heart of Sword (Yoake Mae)" (HEART OF SWORD ～夜明け前～?) was used as the third ending song for the anime series Rurouni Kenshin, further expanding his fan base. He also contributed six songs to the Mobile Suit Gundam SEED franchise – three for Gundam SEED and three for Gundam SEED Destiny. Nishikawa has guest starred as a minor character in each of those anime series that featured his songs. In 2010, his new single "Save the One, Save the All" was used as the ending theme song for the movie Bleach: The Hell Verse.
T.M.Revolution is the first artist to be signed to Tofu Records, a record label (affiliated with Sony Music Japan) promoting j-pop artists in North America. Tofu released three of his most recent studio albums: coordinate (2003), Seventh Heaven (2004), and vertical infinity (2005). Nishikawa made his North American live debut at Otakon, a large anime convention in 2003. He has also performed at Pacific Media Expo in 2004 and at the New York Comic Con in 2008.
