I Get Wet by Andrew W.K.

I Get Wet, Andrew W.K.'s debut album, crashed onto Island on November 13, 2001, and it has exactly one setting. The Michigan-raised, New York-based party evangelist wanted every song to sound like a single giant instrument rather than a bunch of musicians, so he piled overdub on overdub until the whole thing roars. With Jimmy Coup along, he went to Minneapolis in July 2001 to record with John Fields at SubJersey Studio, then headed to Sherman Oaks in August to mix with Mike Shipley.

The inspirations are gloriously unhip: the intense, major-key music he fell for as a kid at the piano, and the everybody-at-once blast of "We Are the World". Hence the relentlessly bright chords and the massed voices shouting as one. "Party Hard" led the charge as the first single, with "She Is Beautiful" behind it, and countdown listeners are still pumping their fists to "Party Hard" two decades on.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.