Bill Kaulitz German Singer Born 1989 in Leipzig

Early life

Bill Kaulitz was born on 1 September 1989 in Leipzig, then part of East Germany. He has an identical twin brother, Tom, who is ten minutes older. Their parents separated when the brothers were seven years old, and their mother later married Gordon Trümper, the guitarist of the German rock band Fatun. Trümper noticed the boys' musical leanings and helped them set up their own group. Bill gravitated to singing and Tom to guitar, and Bill has said in interviews that both began writing songs at around the age of seven.

Career

At ten the brothers started performing live in and around Magdeburg, near their hometown of Loitsche, in small shows with a keyboard standing in for the missing bass and drums. When they were twelve they met Georg Listing and Gustav Schäfer in the audience of one of their gigs. Both offered to join, and the four renamed the band Devilish after an article described their sound as devilishly good. The group put out a self-released record in 2001, but made little headway until Kaulitz auditioned for the television talent show Star Search.

In 2005 the manager David Jost arranged a meeting with Interscope Records, part of Universal Music Group, and the band, now called Tokio Hotel, signed a deal. Their debut album Schrei arrived that year, and its first single "Durch den Monsun" reached number one in Germany within a month. A debut tour of Germany followed, together with a live DVD. A second album, Zimmer 483, appeared in February 2007 and spawned the singles "Übers Ende der Welt", "Spring nicht" and "An deiner Seite (Ich bin da)", with "Heilig" following in 2008.

To reach listeners outside German-speaking countries, the band recorded English versions of selected songs from both albums for the album Scream, released in Europe in 2007 and in the West in 2008. In February 2008 Tokio Hotel played five shows in North America, their first outside Europe. A third German album and second English one, Humanoid, with a more electronic sound, was released on 6 October 2009. The fifth studio album, Kings of Suburbia, came out on 3 October 2014, and the sixth, Dream Machine, on 3 March 2017.

In 2016 Kaulitz began a solo project under the name Billy, releasing the EP I'm Not OK that May. Its single "Love Don't Break Me" came out the same year. He has also appeared as a guest vocalist, including on Far East Movement's "If I Die Tomorrow" in 2012. In 2019 the band released the singles "Melancholic Paradise", "When It Rains It Pours" and "Chateau" while preparing a tour of the same name. His first book, the autobiography Career Suicide, written in German, was published in 2021.

Later singles include "Berlin" with the singer VVAVES in December 2020 and "White Lies" with the duo VIZE in January 2021. The seventh studio album, 2001, was released on 18 November 2022. His genres on record are pop rock and pop music.

Recognition

Humanoid was followed within a month of its release by a win for Tokio Hotel in the Best Group category at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Berlin on 5 November 2009. Away from music, a wax figure of Kaulitz was unveiled at Madame Tussauds in Berlin on 30 September 2008, and MTV News ranked him sixth in its Man of the Year list that December. In September 2009 he was invited to take part in a photo shoot marking the thirtieth birthday of German Vogue.

Public roles

Kaulitz has worked in television alongside his music. He sat on the jury of the tenth season of Deutschland sucht den Superstar in 2013, and in 2019 he co-hosted Queen of Drags. With his brother he hosts the podcast Kaulitz Hills, and since 2024 the pair have appeared in the Netflix reality series Kaulitz & Kaulitz. In 2006 he voiced Arthur in the German version of the film Arthur and the Invisibles and returned to the role for the sequel in 2009. He modelled for Dsquared in early 2010 and featured in a PETA photo shoot with his brother.

Personal life

The twin brothers lived in Hamburg before moving to Los Angeles in October 2010. His brother Tom is married to the model Heidi Klum, a close friend of Bill's. As of October 2026 his Instagram account had more than 2.6 million followers.