Andrew W.K.

Andrew W.K. arrived in November 2001 with I Get Wet, a debut so relentlessly, gleefully loud that it felt less like an album than a pep rally with the amps on fire. Born Andrew Wilkes-Krier on May 9, 1979, and raised in Michigan, he had knocked around local bands from the mid-1990s before moving to New York and making his first recordings under the W.K. name; the Girls Own Juice EP in 2000 got people talking.

The formula was simple and ridiculous and it worked: pile metal riffs, pop hooks and hard-rock thunder into a wall of sound, then sing about partying as if it were a sacred duty. "Party Hard" is the whole philosophy in one song, a stampede of guitars with a chorus you shout rather than sing. He plays guitar and piano as well as singing, and he writes and produces his own records.

The Wolf followed in 2003 and Close Calls With Brick Walls in 2006. Legal troubles then kept him from releasing music in the US, and he answered with 55 Cadillac in 2009, an album of improvised solo piano. He came back to rock with You're Not Alone in 2018 and God Is Partying in 2021, and after five quiet years he surprised everyone in 2026 with Temptation to Exist, an instrumental jazz-noir record. In between he has worked in television and radio, written, and taken his gospel of positivity on the road as a motivational speaker.

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