The first time I heard about Andrew W.K. I was some­where out­side of Glen­rothes on a stage­coach Cityl­ink bus. It was a Fri­day and I was 18. I hadn’t as yet heard any of his music, although admit­tedly at that point I hadn’t heard much music at all, but from what I could gather from Ker­rang magazine he was young, appar­ently music­ally gif­ted and THE NEXT BIG THING in metal. At the time I was younger, music­ally inept and hor­ribly eager to learn about any­thing my new group of “mosher” friends were inter­ested in. Years later this art­icle would be the only thing that I had per­man­ently filed away in my memory from my brief flir­ta­tion with heavy metal journ­al­ism, apart from a story I read on another bus jour­ney about Slip­knot being pel­ted with Mars Bars by the angry fans of another band dur­ing a gig.

I always hated Slip­knot and was obvi­ously grat­i­fied other people felt the same way.

I wouldn’t actu­ally hear his music until another Fri­day night a few weeks later. This time I was slumped ungra­ciously in front of a friends tele­vi­sion, per­us­ing his music chan­nels. I had none of my own, liv­ing as I was between Uni­ver­sity halls of res­id­ence and a selec­tion of sofas scattered around Dun­dee. And it was here that I heard Party Hard for the first time. It was, like the art­icle in Ker­rang, inter­est­ing in a way I couldn’t quite pin down. There was some­thing about the man and his music (apart from his seem­ingly never end­ing legs, unwashed jeans and wet strag­gly hair), that was fas­cin­at­ing and judging by the way that the song fol­lowed me around dif­fer­ent club nights for months after­ward and filled dance­floors every week it indic­ated that other people thought so too. Party Hard was essen­tially a song that did what it said on the tin — insert CD, crank volume, rock out. The fol­lowup song She is Beau­ti­ful and the video (which I still believe to be an accur­ate por­trayal of a day in the life of Mr W.K.) was the same. I couldn’t fig­ure out why I liked him and I cer­tainly couldn’t begin to under­stand why the hell I thought he was so cool.

That know­ledge would only come years later, after the hype had died down, and I had for­saken heavy metal and most of the friends who liked it. I’d been adam­ant that it wasn’t just a phase but at the end of the day, truth­fully most things are. Apart from, as I was about to find out, Andrew W.K.

I can’t tell you quite how it happened. I was 23 now and hid­ing out on the inter­net dur­ing my free time, of which I had a lot. I hadn’t thought about him for a long time and I sup­pose I assumed he had dropped off the face of the planet or was at home mak­ing milk­shakes and ter­ror­ising his neigh­bours after dark ever night. But it was dur­ing this time that I began to hear about Andrew W.K. again. Had I seen this video? Did I know he was guest speak­ing at a friends uni­ver­sity? That he had recor­ded an album of J-Pop cover songs? That he was gold stand­ard, hard core cool on the internet?

I had had no idea.  For all those years I had been doing my own thing, trundling along, not think­ing about him, Andrew W.K. had been busy.  Very busy.  My ignor­ance was of course my own fault.  I’d remembered the art­icle from Ker­rang for years, but I hadn’t paid atten­tion to it like I should have.  After all, it had told me quite simply — pay atten­tion to this man because he is dynamic and inter­est­ing.  Keep your eyes open and your ears pinned back because he is going to sur­prise you.  

I had made a mis­take, like a lot of people had, about Andrew W.K.

 And so it’s time to redress the bal­ance.  I am 25 now and I can state whole­heartedly that I un-ironically love and enjoy Andrew W.K. and here are the reas­ons why:

On Fri­day, Decem­ber 5th 2008, a die hard Andrew W.K. fan named Dominic Owen Mal­lary passed away after an acci­dent while his band Last Lights per­formed at Boston Uni­ver­sity. Dominic had always said his dying wish was to have Andrew W.K. blas­ted at his wake. Catch­ing wind of this, Andrew came to the wake, and played clas­sical piano for the entire time after pay­ing his respects.
Andrew W.K. on Wiki­pe­dia

Your Friend, Andrew WK was a real­ity show on MTV2 star­ring musi­cian Andrew W.K..

In the show, people write let­ters to the white denim-clad rocker, and he answers some on the air. Let­ters that will not be helped by an answer are over­seen by Andrew him­self; he does this by trav­el­ing to wherever the letter-writer is from, and stay­ing at their house a few days, work­ing out the prob­lem.
Your Friend, Andrew W.K. on Wiki­pe­dia

In 2005, Andrew announced that he would begin per­form­ing as a self-help, new age motiv­a­tional speaker. He accep­ted invit­a­tions to speak at Yale Uni­ver­sity, New York Uni­ver­sity, The Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin, Carne­gie Mel­lon Uni­ver­sity, The Cooper Union, West­ern Mis­souri State Uni­ver­sity, and North­east­ern Uni­ver­sity.
Andrew W.K. on Wiki­pe­dia

Dur­ing 2007, Andrew per­formed a series of unpre­dict­able hap­pen­ings as part of his “One Man Show” tour. Each event began with Andrew impro­vising on the piano alone on a stage before they fre­quently evolved into giant parties, with most of the audi­ence dan­cing on stage with Andrew, them­selves play­ing the piano and singing the lyr­ics.
Andrew W.K. on Wiki­pe­dia

Premium Col­lec­tion: The Japan Cov­ers, known as One-Shot Game: Cov­ers (一発勝負～カヴァーズ ‚Ippatsu Shōbu~Kavāzu?) in Japan, is a cover album by Andrew W.K.. The album con­sists of cov­ers of Japan­ese pop songs that was released in Japan by Uni­ver­sal Music Group on Novem­ber 26, 2008.

The songs were ori­gin­ally mar­keted as 30-second ring­tones and repack­aged in their com­plete ver­sions as this 14-song album. Andrew W.K. is quoted as say­ing that this album is a “gift to the Japan­ese people, for all the incred­ible warmth and kind­ness they’ve given me over the years.”
The Japan Cov­ers on Wiki­pe­dia

On tour for The Wolf, Andrew was injured on stage and broke his foot. After the con­cert, he signed auto­graphs from the ambu­lance. Not want­ing to let his fans down, he per­formed the remainder of the tour in a wheel­chair.
Andrew W.K. on Wik­pe­dia

This post brought to you by the soci­ety for Andrew W.K. Appreciation.