The Impact of Andrew WK

Those of you who know me through twitter know that I am a big fan of retweeting some of the things that Andrew WK says. I first was exposed to the musician, Andrew WK, many years ago through Jeff Gorfman via his (now defunct) web portal “Avenger339’s House of Awesomeness.” Jeff’s description of Andrew WK there was mainly a negative criticism about how all Andrew WK sings about is partying, but it at least introduced me to the character, Andrew WK.

A number of years later (in 2009), Andrew appeared as a special guest on Tom Scharpling’s long-running “The Best Show on WFMU.” As far as favorite episodes of this show, the appearance of Andrew WK was one of my all time favorite, and I make it a point to listen to that show in podcast form regularly.

As a result of things that were alluded to on the show, my exposure to Andrew WK increased tremendously. The first thing I did was seek out a youtube video of an appearance by Andrew on Fox News’s Red Eye. Watch it for yourself (It’s hilarious):

A resonating theme about Andrew that came out during his appearance on The Best Show was his positivity. No matter what, Andrew didn’t have anything bad to say about anything. This led me to following him on twitter (http://www.twitter.com/AndrewWK). As far as twitter feeds go, Andrew’s is definitely a bright spot on the internet. His feed mainly consists of “Party Tips” in which Andrew will provide just a quick, usually helpful lesson about how to turn every day into a party. I urge all of you to read Andrew WK’s twitter feed because it is seriously incredible. He will even interact with fans from time to time.

One night, Andrew offered a giveaway of a personally signed copy of his newest album. All you had to do was retweet his message and I guess the first person won. Well I was the first person! I received a twitter direct message from Andrew asking for my address and shortly thereafter found this in the mail:

This was seriously one of the coolest things that I’ve ever gotten. He actually posts giveaways all the time! I keep entering for either an Andrew WK bobblehead or the Japanese Import CD that contains “Monica” (I love that song!).

Andrew WK’s song “Party Hard” has now become a staple in my karaoke repertoire. I really don’t do too many songs that extract so much energy from the crowd, but that’s exactly what this song does.

Now, he’s not my favorite musician ever or anything, but I think his positive attitude, catchy music, and, at the very least, his twitter feed is noteworthy enough to deserve a blog post dedicated to him.