Okay, so is anyone else here creeped the fuck out by Andrew WK? We've always sort of sensed that the dude was a little off, but now, after reading a pair of recent items on The Guardian's blog, let's just say, ahem, suspicions confirmed. In case you haven't been following the saga, here's what you missed:
When our boy Andy was still a minor, evidently, rocking a very bad and ill-advised bleach job and answering to his given name, Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier, he was crushing hard on a classmate of his from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was so over the moon, in fact, that he apparently penned a ode to her called "My Destiny." Sample lyrics: "Called up your number fourteen times/To see if you were home/Home is where I'll find you/When I Find You," followed by, "I'll make you fall in love with me."
Um, yeah. Hold on, though. If you think that's unsettling, wait til you hear the ditty, a warped Type O Negative-like dirge dipped in pharmaceutical grade obsession and posing as a love song (hear it after the jump). Oddly, that creeptastic overture garnered a restraining order. But wait, there's more.
Today, The Guardian posted a follow-up item graciously filling us in on what happened in the intervening years. In a nutshell: Mr. WK put the brakes on the stalking, but busied himself with wrecking shit and stealing shit and then somehow managed to get himself into more hot water for mail fraud by posing as cartoonist Robert Crumb's attorney.
Sensing he needed a change, he picked up stakes and moved to NYC, where he "signed up," as he puts it, to "do Andrew WK." Shortly thereafter, he wrote a track called ... wait for it ... "I Want to Kill," boasting the lines, "Kill, Kill, I Want To Kill, Kill," that alludes to his mindset at the time.
Next thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire. Fame and fortune ensue -- well, fame, at least. Years later, he runs into his old crush at a show in Cleveland, who is evidently willing to let bygones be bygones. Inexplicably, perhaps blinded by his notoriety, she actually seeks him out after he makes a bee line for his bus to apologize to him.
"It's great to see you after all these years," she said. "I want to apologise for getting you in so much trouble back in high school. I think that song you wrote is really sweet, but back when I was younger, I was too freaked out to handle it or appreciate it."
Since apologies are being handed out, he offers up his own for his creepazoid tendencies. This, combined with the fact that he's finally in her presence, freaks him the fuck out and causes him to have such a severe anxiety attack that he blacks out and, uh, shits himself. He subsequently feels this is somehow cosmic and karmic, the universe's way of paying him back from his stalker tendencies as an adolescent.
All of which brings us to ask: WTF, WK?
MP3: "My Destiny," Andrew WK MP3: "I Want to Kill," Andrew WK
