God is Dead and He Is Partying
The Divine Wisdom of Andrew W.K.'s Liminal Performance of Identity
For his 2021 appearance at Chicago’s Riot Fest (pictured above), Andrew WK—the patron saint of partying—opened his set with “Everybody Sins,” the power-metal single from the album he had just released that year: God Is Partying. As he took to the stage, keen-eyed festival goers may have noticed something. Normally sporting a trademark sweat-stained white T-shirt, white pants, and high-top sneakers, tonight his shirt would feature an image of Pinocchio. For some, this may seem an inconsequential detail. For others, seeing him wear a shirt depicting the puppet who dreamed of being a real boy was another strategically placed clue in a decades-long story.
One of my favourite songs of all time is Andrew W.K’s “She Is Beautiful,” a gloriously ridiculous and earnest profession of love for a random woman. It starts with a guitar played through bit-crushing distortion, giving it the sound of a cheap alarm clock. As it continues, it starts to sound less like an alarm to wake one up and more like a countdown to set one off. Then, 27 seconds in, the entire song kicks off. Sure, there’s your standard buzzing guitars and stadium drums, but it also features a piano that has taken over the staccato rhythm of the lead guitar, turning the whole song into a carnivalesque wonder. That is, the song is both “carnivalesque” in the sense intended by Mikhail Bakhtin: a societal “release valve” where social norms and conventions are flipped, but also “carnival-esque” in that the piano gives the song an orchestral, dramatic flair. You could call this is rock-and-roll circus music, but it’s really “party” music. If there was any confusion, just look at the other song titles on the album in which the song appears, three of which contain the word “party.”
For most people who aren’t familiar with the music of Andrew W.K. (née Andrew Wilkes-Krier), it pretty much what you’d expect: dumb, loud, and sweaty rock. This would open up his debut album—I Get Wet—to a somewhat divisive critical reception upon its release, garnering a score of 64/100 on Metacritic despite mostly favourable reviews. While many critics—such as Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone—would embrace the hard-partying blast that ripped through their speakers, its sheer barbarity was an immediate turn-off for those like Pitchfork’s founder Ryan Schrieber, who panned the album ruthlessly. Reading it 23 years later, there’s something quite funny about how the review drips with a millennial hipster cynicism. Schrieber is infuriated not only by the music itself, but those seemingly of his own tribe (the “punk” and “indie” kids) who claim to love it. He accuses them of being locked in denial, writing:
"It's fun" is about the only legitimate excuse a guy could come up with—and that's the one thing I'll give it to warrant the .6 in the rating—but this world of music which history has graced us with is loaded with fun music. Even fun music with substance, fun music that doesn't talk to you like you're some kinda total dipshit that wouldn't know Boredoms [Japanese noise rock band] from buzzworthy. And you don't even have to look that hard! So then, what is the excuse for a typically elitist music nerd to bow to Andrew WK's blistering tard-rock? That's right, folks: there isn't one.
While Schreiber was not the only critic to hate this record with a blistering passion, this was the main gripe critics had with I Get Wet. Not did just it lack substance, it was just plain stupid. But then again, of course it was.
While the music was bone-crushingly simple, it was the overall mythos of Andrew W.K. that was seemingly anything but. For such a wild party-rocker, his identity was also a kind of mystery, with a review of his first UK show suggesting that the entire project was an “elaborate hoax” cooked up by Dave Grohl, with Wilkes-Krier merely a vessel for a bunch of dumb jock-jams that Grohl had written himself, and had him perform as a kind of alter-ego. Things would get increasingly strange for fans in 2004 after the release of his second album The Wolf. At a college radio station’s holiday party, after his set was cut short, a rumour began to spread that the man on stage had been an impostor—it was not the “real” Andrew W.K. But was this true?
On a pre-social media internet, Andrew WK would use his website (the now-defunct awkworld.com) to communicate directly to fans through the site’s Q&A page. Normally, the messages could range from warm and encouraging to generic platitudes (“Remember that this too shall pass”), but around this time, the answers began taking on a very strange tone, along with a strange alpha-numerical code. As fans came to the site looking for answers about who the performer was onstage, they were told they were speaking not to Andrew himself, but the self-professed webmaster for the site (a woman named Kristine Williams), who gave vague, rambling answers to the fans’ questions.
Before I continue, I’d be remiss to not mention that this essay is greatly indebted to a 2018 Stereogum article by Michael Nelson that covers this whole saga extensively (and I mean extensively). Being a fan of Andrew WK during this period, Nelson logged on to the site days after the Q&A with Williams, and discovered a message that he found to be as deeply disturbing: “it scared the hell out of me.” Written in all-capitals and full of odd typos, the message was addressed to Andrew WK directly, its writer: “Steev Mike.” In the letter, “Steev Mike” claims to have been the original mastermind behind Andrew WK’s music, threatens to expose “the truth” to his fans, and accuses him of being a “back-stabbing fraud.” Here’s the post-script
P.S. UNLESS YOU WANT EVEN MORE PEOPLE TO FIND OUT THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MUSIC, OUR AGREEMENT, AND YOUR NEW GIRLFRIEND, STOP WITH YOUR PTANS ANC [sic] HOLD UP YOUR END OF THE DEAL
Within a short time, the message was deleted from the site and replaced by another, this one ending in “Sincerely, Andrew WK.” While the second message claims it intends to put fans’ worries to rest, its tone reads as desperate, anxious, and paranoid—begging them not to believe “Steev Mike” because (originally in all capitals) “I used to call myself Steev Mike and it’s nothing now.” What Nelson found to be particularly concerning at the time was how the message read as if written by someone experiencing a psychotic break. This being distressing enough, he claims to have personally suffered the trauma of witnessing close friends and loved ones go through psychosis. At that time, as Nelson describes it, “real people started getting really worried.” Was Andrew WK in some kind of danger? And if Andrew WK wasn’t experiencing psychosis, then what was actually going on?
Within days, another message appeared on the site claiming to have been written in response to “thousands” of fan emails all trying to make sense of what was happening. Like the two messages before it, it only deepened the confusion. One example:
Q: Are Steev Mike and Andrew W.K. the same person?
A: No. “ANDREW W.K.” and STEEV MIKE are not the same person. In the past “ANDREW W.K.” has stated that he used to call himself STEEV MIKE, however this does not indicate that they are in fact the same individual.
What would ultimately follow for the next few years would be dozens of fan sites and blogs all espousing different theories on the truth behind Andrew WK’s “real” identity. There were theories that this was all a big publicity stunt, a matter of a spurned business partner, along with more outlandish theories that suggested he was a hired actor, or even a member (or tool) of the Illuminati. While publicly, Andrew WK would continue to tour and release music and was affable and charismatic in interviews, broaching the subject of Steev Mike would only result in reticent, vague responses. To make matters even more baffling, in 2009 he would give a spoken, “stream of consciousness” performance, and would make this startling claim:
“[I] want to confess something to all of you:
I’m actually not Andrew W.K.
I’m not. I’m not the same guy that you may have seen from the I Get Wet album … I’m not that same person. And I don’t just mean that in a philosophical or conceptual way — it’s not the same person at all.
….I’m the next person who is playing Andrew W.K …”
After this, he released yet another statement and… I mean, Christ, you get the idea…
At a certain point, it appeared to fans that whatever the actual circumstances were behind the initial messages, his seeming refusal to provide a clear explanation was a conscious decision, but to what end? Why would someone go so far out of his way to intentionally confuse and bewilder his audience? And what gave him the idea to do so?
Nelson’s explanation is interesting, and for those interested in online rabbit-holes and breadcrumb trails, his article can make for a rewarding read. I’ll summarize it like this: This had been orchestrated by Andrew W.K. and his record label from the very beginning (surprise, surprise). With everything co-ordinated in advance, they planted stories of a committee of shadowy music-industry figures controlling Andrew all over the web, then sat back and watched as the fanbase gave them a life of their own. Nelson stakes this claim on two anonymous internet comments that he wholeheartedly believes were written by Andrew W.K. himself. One of which explains the basic planning and logistics (“A LOT of people have had their hand involved in the creation of these storylines”), while another suggests more details about the project’s overall artistic vision—something which appears to have been shaped over time by the fan response. What the entire project would eventually become was Andrew W.K. “craft[ing his] own non-existence” in order to give his fans “the sensation equal to maximum pleasure.”
In many ways, Steev Mike is a commentary on the nature of identity. Identity (and this is where my analysis starts to stray a bit from Nelson’s) is a product of what scholars like Gilles Deleuze would call “the virtual.” It is an immanent plane that is bursting with potentiality. It is real, but not concrete. It’s something which is constructed relationally (as in, we construct our own identities in relation to each other), therefore it is always in flux—shifting and re-shaping itself. In many ways, our identities are not real, but if they’re not real, then they can be anything we want them to be. From an existential perspective, this means that you (yes, you) are free. You are free to do what you want to do. In other words: It’s time to party.
Yes, it’s stupid.
But then again, of course it is.
8 years since Nelson’s article, I still remember being floored upon reading it, it seemed to be a pretty high-concept art project for the guy who wrote “Party Till You Puke”. Of course, Andrew W.K. would deny everything Nelson had written, only to continue his performance of “non-existence.” Since this time, he’s only leaned further into the mythos. In the video for his song “Babalon,” it opens with a statement about his “personally caused psychological disassociation [sic],” which is credited to none other than the Kristine Williams (who, like Steev Mike, is also a fabrication of Andrew WK). Today, if you go to his Instagram account, you’ll see that he has recently begun posting up a storm of odd, non-sequitur content (he’s also getting back in the studio). If you go to his subreddit, you can see that his fans are now in on the joke.
Looking at all of this now, I can’t help but shed a tear over how all of this now feels so commonplace in our current media landscape. Something once thought so outlandish and artistically ambitious now finds itself situated amongst a plethora of other bygone internet-based marketing gimmicks, which were only beginning to develop around the time of I Get Wet’s release. These kinds of “do your own research” mysteries—what were initially known as alternate reality games—have now taken a more sinister tone in a post-QAnon world. Funny enough, both the Steev Mike conspiracy and QAnon were known for using simple alphanumeric codes (A=1, B=2 etc.) to signal to those in the know. The presence of the mysterious “Q” figure was represented by the number 17, while “55” (as in “EE”) would signal the presence of Steev Mike.
In Phillip Crandall’s 33 1/3 essay on I Get Wet, a former manager is quoted describing Andrew WK as having “a sprinkle of Andy Warhol and a sprinkle of Andy Kaufman,” two prophets of postmodernity. While Warhol’s foresight into pop culture (his celebration of “low culture,” and his “15 minutes” comment) has been celebrated for some time, currently Kaufman’s work is seeming to show itself as more of a parallel to our current cultural moment. By subverting the medium of performance by stretching it to its absolute limit, Kaufman’s work as a comedian seemed to bend reality in on itself, leaving audiences confused (and often infuriated). A massive wrestling fan, what Kaufman had brought to comedy was kayfabe: the illusion that a performance was actually real. What scholars might refer to as “liminal performance.”
Citing works by performance scholars Anna Fischer Lichte and Phillip Auslander, Laine Kristberga defines liminal performance simply as an experience in which “it is difficult to mark a boundary between “this is art / theatre” and “this is reality.” Like Deleuze’s virtual, liminality is charged with potential, as there are no binaries or dichotomies or boundaries. Situated between borders, liminality can applied to performances in a variety of ways. A performance that uses technology to blur the boundary between audience and performer can be a liminal performance. A performance that integrates the audience can be a liminal performance. A man claiming to be someone he is not (but actually is) and refusing to determine the boundary between who he is and isn’t is a liminal performance that embraces the potentialities of the virtual and liminality itself. While this does read as a lot of conjecture, there is some precendece to this. In an interview in Vanity Fair, Andrew WK describes how in his adolescence he discovered “this whole other dimension of the world based on penetrating it and twisting it and distorting it…Freaking yourself out and getting way out into the outer-zone.” He adds, “I don’t know if there’s a word to sum all that up.” I am confident that the word he is looking for is liminality.
He goes on to say that what attracted him to “not understanding” was how it seemingly imbued the world with possibility, excitement, and discovery. While exciting, to embrace the feeling of “not understanding”—to willfully lose oneself between the borders of the liminal—is essentially to admit to one’s own helplessness. On a lighter note, it also means to stop taking yourself so damn seriously.
This is one of the great ironies of the metal and punk rock scenes that Andrew W.K.’s music owes so much to. They appear to be nihilistic and cynical, but (in a pre-internet world of rigid subcultural boundaries), they actually took themselves very seriously. There is no shortage of small-town punks and metalheads alike who will say how this music provided them some solace or community while feeling like an outcast—“Punk Rock Save My Life” is a common maxim. That said, the boundaries of these communities also tended to be well guarded from any “posers” who might try to join for the sake of fashion. If you wanted to be a punk, you could not just partake superficially: you had to be a real punk.
Centred in this culture of authenticity, which Gabriel Solis writes to be the defining feature of rock music, is the notion that the songs performed by an artist be written by them as well. Theodore Grayck goes further, claiming that rock music specifically: “insists on and explores the meaning of personal authenticity.” As a performance, the Steev Mike conspiracy certainly does latter, but Wilkes-Krier’s refusal to be explicit about his intentions or identity throws the former entirely out the window. This was a bold move to make at the time of I Get Wet’s turn-of-the-millenium release. Writing on the seeming disappearance of the “sellout”, Franz Nicolay notes how the stigma of an artist having their song used in a commercial was long seen as one selling their own sacred credibility, thus violating the sacred nature of art. This became a little bit harder for artists to stick to once file-sharing services like Napster began cutting into record sales, forcing them to find other sources of revenue. This became a tricky line for artists to navigate, since having a song featured in a commercial could mean a much-needed payday at the risk of “selling out” their supposed authenticity. For Wilkes-Krier to reject having any authentic self was arguably a statement against an arbitrary set of standards determining what “authenticity” even is, let alone what it meant in the world of rock.
The debate of what determines music to be “authentic,” is one rages on endlessly. In Carl Wilson's book Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, Wilson explores his own distaste for Céline Dion, asking what exactly does it mean to not like an artist? While not the most obvious artist to compare to Andrew W.K., both he and Céline are known experessing a particular intensity of feeling in their music. For Dion, it is overemotional, madaulin “schmaltz;” for Andrew W.K., the feeling is “party.” Based on Wilson’s argument, since both of them approach their work in earnest, it makes it ripe for detreiment: it beomes—what we now call—“cringe.” Wilson also notes Dion’s critics tend to go after her seeming lack of a unique character. However, after speaking to many of her fans, Wilson suggests that her blankness is her very appeal. Perhaps, he suggests, it’s more honest “that she presents a subjectivity so flimsy and precarious” to her fans. For Dion or W.K., the very point of their appeal is how they themselves as blank slates for their audience to project their own feelings and passions upon. In fact, Andrew’s decision to wear all white, all the time, may have been a not-so-subtle hint at this.
Of course, despite his earnestness, there is a touch of irony in how the guy went through all these lengths of building this paradoxical persona, for the purpose of people to not pay attention to it.If you ask me, I’d say that’s just a classic example of how despite what any artist may tell you, anyone who is passionate enough to make art will almost always take their own work seriously. With this, there’s something endearing about Andrew W.K. has constructed his self-negating persona as a service to his fans. Taken en toto, it starts to read as a commentary on how silly the obsession over “authenticity” or “coolness” is, and starts to align with his otherwise hyper-optimistic public persona. Stop Caring. Stop worrying. Those who will get it, will get it. Those who will not, will not. Returning to Wilson, he goes on to suggest this may be the thing that critics tend to miss when dismissing a supposedly “inauthentic” artist: “The authenticity is in the gift, not the giver.”
In 2012, Pitchfork would review I Get Wet’s 10-year reissue much more favourably, with Ian Cohen suggesting that maybe attempting critique the album at all was a mistake. He even admits that his own glowing review for a student newspaper in 2001 was perhaps a little too generous: “a lot of us seemingly did I Get Wet a great disservice trying to intellectualize it from both sides.” This may be so, but there is something about the Schrieber review that seemingly completes the vision of I Get Wet. Schrieber spends most of the review being the ultimate buzzkill, telling anyone who might enjoy the music to stop doing so immediately. He is enraged by how Andrew W.K. earnestly “spews naïve positivity” in his interviews, suggesting that the music is “perfect” because “all it wants is for people to be happy”—“LIES!” he proclaims.
One’s first reaction may be that this emphasis on the fan experience is to dismiss the work of artistic critique, but by rejecting the concept of having authentic persona at all, Andrew W.K. erases the artist from the conversation entirely. In the imagined world of Steev Mike—which is essentially a satire of the music industry—the music itself and the feeling it creates (“Party!”) are always emphasized as the priority. It’s all about the music, the feeling it creates, and Andrew W.K. doesn’t want anything—even his own existence—to get in the way of that for anyone.
Now obviously, there are some things worth critiquing about the Andrew W.K./Steev Mike project, as there are plenty of artists who have described themselves as being trapped under repressive contracts and abused by major labels. If there’s a real-world equivalent to the Steev Mike conspiracy, one might look to Britney Spears’ battle over being released from her conservatorship, which united fans together to “Free Britney.” It also should be said that living in a post-truth era, where traditional notions of authenticity have seemingly been abandoned, has been far less of a party than anticipated. Constant self-reinvention might be great to break a cycle of personal self-doubt, but it’s also a great way to dodge accountability. Even liminal performance can’t be written off as something just strange and fun. Like Nathan Fielder’s second season of The Rehearsal has shown, blurring the line between reality and performance can have real-world consequences. Like Andrew W.K., Fielder is trying to show that there are benefits to this, but sometimes a joke can get taken too far.
All said and done, I feel that to add any more to this writing would betray the spirit of Andrew W.K., who—after getting married to Kat Dennings in 2023—appears to be back in the studio. I’ll leave you with these words from Cohen, describing the futility of reviewing such a ridiculous-yet-fun record. Ultimately, he says, the process lends itself to one having to accept the absurdity of one’s own critique. A critic can’t use “Party Hard” to make a larger point about society without looking like a simple rube on the one hand or a killjoy on the other. One must let go of any semblance of ego and accept it. “It just is,” he writes.
It is. It very much is.
But then again, of course it was.
Works Cited
Andrew W.K. I Get Wet. Island. 2001.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington, 1968.
Carter, Spike, and Andrew Wilkes-Krier. “A Very Heady Talk with Andrew W.K.. about His Glenn Beck-Backed Talk Show.” Vanity Fair, 3 July 2015, www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/07/why-does-andrew-wk-glenn-beck-radio-show
Cohen, Ian. “Andrew W.K.: I Get Wet.” Pitchfork, pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16836-i-get-wet/
Crandall, Phillip. Andrew W.K.’s I Get Wet. Bloomsbury, 2014.
Gracyk, Theodore. I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity. Temple University Press, 2001.
Kristberga, Laine. "Liminal Performances: In-Between Threshold States.” Contemporary Latvian Theatre A Decade Bookazine. Zinātne, 2020. performanceartlatvia.org/publications/liminal-performances-in-between-threshold-states
Nelson, Michael. “The Crying Of Lot 55: The Unsolved Mysteries And Alternate Realities Of Andrew W.K.” Stereogum. September 21, 2018. stereogum.com/2015589/andrew-wk-steev-mike/columns/sounding-board/
Nicolay, Franz. “The Rise and Fall of the ‘Sellout.’” Slate Magazine, Slate, 28 July 2017, slate.com/culture/2017/07/the-history-of-calling-artists-sellouts.html.
Wilson, Carl. Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to The End of Taste. Continuum, 2007.
Schreiber, Ryan. “Andrew W.K.: I Get Wet.” Pitchfork, pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/184-i-get-wet/. Accessed 20 June 2025.
Solis, Gabriel. “I did it my way: Rock and the logic of covers.” Popular Music and Society, vol. 33, no. 3, July 2010, pp. 297–318, https://doi.org/10.1080/03007760903523351.