The party boy of the music industry is back. After nearly a decade between albums Andrew W.K. returns with an album guaranteed to make the listener think deeply – You’re Not Alone. A quick listen to the album quickly wins over even the most hardened critic and delivers one of the best alternative tracks of 2018 – in the form of ‘Music Is Worth Living For.’
With the hype around the album lifting I sit down and have a chat with the man himself and Andrew is quick to explain just how important this album is to him. “On one level the inspiration was just to get an album done,” he explains when we start talking about the inspirations behind the album. “It was inspiring just to have that opportunity to make a record with the possibility of others being able to hear it – that has always been very thrilling to me. I also think that specifically the people that have stayed with me for so long, people that have been true believers not only in me but in this mission we are pursuing together… I thought about them a lot. All those people that have worked with me or have been coming to the concerts and getting something out of this for almost twenty years now. There’s a great sense of gratitude there, but beyond that it is the same inspiration that I have always had and that is my normal musical approach and that is to conjure up an euphoric, difficult and emotional movement that is the combination of every emotion – and that is crying at the same time that you’re laughing it transcends thought and mind and somehow affirms in a cofounding way – life…. that’s the goal but it is hard to get there.”
When I tell Andrew that ‘Music Is Worth Living For’ is one of those songs that I use to get out of an emotional slump. “Well thank you,” Andrew says. “That is the goal, that is the one goal and that is my desire for music and that is that it makes me feel better about being alive. And it also changes an idea – it’s not even an escape it is actually a change in the physical reality of existence and you can feel it happening – music is extremely powerful, extremely magic and mystical – it is a musical miracle, I can feel that happening in moments.”
You can hear HEAVY’S interview with Andrew W.K. and the album You’re Not Alone is out now.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdW3UJ7lQvU]
