Unfortunately, not every band can be good. Obviously, that’s a lie. They all totally could if they had the right singer in place. And by “right singer” I mean party advocate and overall good-time enthusiast Andrew W.K. That’s why we decided to rank 50 bands that would be improved if their singer was the guy who wrote “Party Hard,” “It’s Time to Party,” “Party Til You Puke,” “The Power of Partying,” and many more party-based hits.
50. Kiss
To be honest, the only thing that would improve Kiss is if every member of the band was replaced by Andrew. Even then I’m not sure it’d be enough.
49. My Bloody Valentine
Shoegaze bands are notorious for their immobility on stage. That’s boring to look at. I want to see a singer do mid-air kicks and throw punches with no regard for their personal surroundings and shit. Kevin Shields could never.
48. Cannibal Corpse
There’s no denying that Cannibal Corpse’s music rips. But their vocalist’s death growl reminds me of Tim Allen’s “Home Improvement” grunt. Replacing him with Andrew could be the missing link that would make them a household name.
47. The Misfits
An Andrew W.K.-era Misfits lineup would totally make up for the Graves era and whatever that era was where Jerry Only was the lead singer.
46. American Football
There’s nothing worse than an emo band that doesn’t look like they play the sport they’re named after. Andrew at least bears resemblance to someone who could be a backup linebacker.
45. The Pixies
Black Francis looks less like a lead singer of a band and more like a roadie of a band. If anything, Andrew would be more of a cosmetic change.
44. Dave Matthews Band
If Andrew W.K. replaced Dave Matthews as the Dave Matthews in Dave Matthews Band I would have no choice but to start wearing a hemp necklace, cargo shorts, and sandals. Actually, this is not ideal.
43. Trapt
The only thing stopping me from enjoying this band is their asshole lead singer. That and their music, lyrics, social media presence, and overall aesthetic. Andrew would at least fix one of their many issues.
42. Joy Division
Vocalists shouldn’t bum you out when they’re singing. They should inspire you to buy a six-pack on a Tuesday on your way to commit petty crimes with best friends in the name of “living your best life.”
41. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
Andrew W.K., Andrew W.K., Andrew W.K., and Andrew W.K. just rolls off the tongue better.
40. The Killers
The Killers pioneered Mormon rock for some reason. There should be a clear separation between church and music. Unless, of course, you’re Andrew W.K., who once titled an album “God is Partying.” Preach.
39. Sum 41
It’s not about Deryck Whibley being a poor lead singer so much as him being 5’7”. Andrew W.K. is 6’3”. That’s a frontman I can get behind.
38. Yo La Tengo
This band has been around for almost 40 years but I’ve never had the urge to actually check out what they sound like. With Andrew as their singer, I would finally have an excuse to look them up.
37. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
The Boss is in his mid-70s, so someone’s going to have to take over for him when he retires. Just thinking ahead on this one.
36. The Smiths
There’s no doubt the Smiths were talented at writing music. Most Smiths songs start off with a Johnny Marr guitar riff that grabs your attention before Morrissey’s voice makes you go “yeah, no.” I’d like to listen to more than 20 seconds of a Smiths song before I have to turn it off.
35. Pearl Jam
I can’t understand a single word Eddie Vedder says. Even if I can’t decipher everything W.K. says, I know what the subject matter is going to be about.
34. Reel Big Fish
I don’t know what a ska band would sound like with Andrew W.K. at the helm, but I’m willing to give it a go.
33. The Smashing Pumpkins
Billy Corgan is severely lacking in exuberance levels and overall charm. It’s the main thing holding this band back.
32. Sublime with Rome
“Sublime with Rome with Andrew W.K.” may be a mouthful, but it’s worth the extra syllables if it means I’d be inclined to actually listen to them.
31. Backstreet Boys
The main problem with boy bands is that there aren’t any grown men in them willing to have a bloody nose on their album covers.
30. 311
311 has two primary vocalists. I can’t keep up with that many. You could just consolidate them into one Andrew W.K. and make everyone happy.
Well we had to start somewhere, and it had to be their debut album. “Shallow” comes out of the gate swinging (as an eight-track album should, there’s limited time damn it) but overall doesn’t say a whole lot that’s super consequential, unless you’re the kind of person who gets irrationally angry over having a head cold. Though what it lacks in the lyrics department is made up for in feedback-laden raw energy and hilarious self-deprecation. The one-two combo of the script flipping “Closet Marine” and “I Broke My Own Heart” are the glue that holds the album together.
Five albums and more than a decade into their existence, you can hear in Matt Korvette’s voice that he’s angrier than ever, his piercing scream now more of a guttural growl. “Why Love Now” covers the existential crisis of realizing our bodies are falling apart (“Waiting on My Horrible Warning”) along with the world around us, and that mediocrity is the new normal (“The Bar is Low”). The band sounds like they’re soundtracking the apocalypse while Korvette’s voice gets even more gravely as the album trudges on. Still, he makes a pretty good case for pegging on “Cold Whip Cream” so at least we can have some fun before the end times.
Remember when you graduated college ready to conquer the world only to realize that everyone sucks and the best days are behind you? Pepperidge Farms – I mean Pissed Jeans – does. It’s the darkest effort in their catalog, and a perfect soundtrack for mid-20s angst set to post-punk and old-school hardcore. Though as Korvette deftly illustrates throughout the album, the only thing worse than life not turning out how you expected is being a conformist tool. And yet on “I’ve Still Got You (Ice Cream)” he makes a compelling case that there’s still beauty in this world.
It’s a dangerous game when a band begins an album with the best song in its repertoire, but from the infinitely ass kicking “False Jesii, Pt. 2” the only way to go is up. You’d swear upon first listen that this was the second coming of Jesus Lizard. Korvette comes as close as he can to writing love songs with “She is Science Fiction” and “Lip Ring”, while also pointing out that as opposed to what Green Day has said, masturbation hasn’t lost its fun on “Pleasure Race”. Hell, it’s more fun than ever! “King of Jeans” is a perfect encapsulation of being in your late 20s/early 30s: the mind rages, but the body wants to stay in bed.
“Honeys” plays out like a day in the life of an office worker at 100 miles per hour. With opener “Bathroom Laughter” launching you out of bed like a screeching alarm clock when you’re already late for work, the next 40 minutes of “life is hell” affirmations are the boys at their best both sonically and lyrically. Dispensing hot tips on subjects like how to stay healthy (don’t go to the doctor) and keeping your partner happy (do the bare minimum, it’s fine), not a moment is wasted and you’re left with the satisfaction that someone out there would also do cartwheels if your boss died.
This woman shows up, briefly alludes to having a kid with Roman, and then vanishes from existence. I need people who are going to be on time, not disappear from reality.
Dude was offended I even approached him. “Your entire enterprise is the exact sort of hollow, pedantic, lowest common denominator drivel eroding the human spirit like a cancer from the inside, all in the name of the almighty dollar” were his exact words. We sell t-shirts, bro, chill.
With the exception of Roman, the overt Nazis on “Succession” are low on this list, and Jeryd Mencken is the lowest of the low. This dude dismissed someone for crying at their father’s funeral, he’s not someone I want to see when I stroll into work on molly.
His entire marketing strategy was that I should call my dad? I don’t even know my dad.
She spent the whole interview telling me I need to strategize, but she wouldn’t strategize with me! Then she told me I need to talk to Ewan some more, and that guy hates my ass. She’s out.
Weirdest interview ever. She stared at me making passive-aggressive small talk the whole time as her staff brainstormed and printed a shirt design. Then her maid handed it to her and then she handed it to me and said “
All we know about Ray is that Logan once told him to piss in a bucket and he thought Logan was serious. I don’t know if he was intimidated or he’s really that literal, but either way, he doesn’t have what it takes to make my t-shirt shop the top on the boardwalk.
Matsson sent in some physical 
I don’t know where this guy gets off. He spent the whole interview asking who else I knew on the boardwalk and saying he would love an introduction like I owed him something. Screw him and his cheese knobbies.
Imagine what an incompetent pariah you need to be to wind up playing second fiddle to Connor Roy.
The dude’s only previous job experience was at The100, a company that never got off the ground. Pass.
Mark’s shirt design was a swastika, and he spent the whole interview telling me that it was a Tibetan swastika that had nothing to do with the Nazis.
Willa’s Mom spent the entire interview walking around the shop and announcing how she planned to redecorate. Did you know our vinyl press station would be the perfect spot for a chaise lounge?
Kendall’s kids decided to work together as one creative team. Unfortunately, all their design pitches involve 
The failed White House press secretary to t-shirt hut pipeline is more significant than you think, and it doesn’t usually work out for anyone involved.
The boardwalk t-shirt shop game is a competitive, cutthroat world. I thought I could use his skill set to dig up some dirt on my neighbors over at “Tee Myself and I.” Unfortunately, his design pitch, a shirt featuring a 
Her pitches were all plays on “Live Laugh Love.” “Live Laugh Divorce,” “Live Laugh Chardonnay,” “Live, Laugh, Overreact,” etc. Kinda played out, Rava. You’re too online, and mostly Facebook mom groups from the looks of it.
Tom may have “won the succession” and he’s a company man through and through, but he brings absolutely nothing to the table creatively. He did offer to go to prison for me several times, but unless he can deep fake himself in that video of me setting fire to “Beach Tees and Beyond” I’m going to need to keep exploring other legal strategies.
Connor’s pitch: A cartoon drawing of Napoleon with a visible erection captioned with “
You would think a father/daughter team would be relatively wholesome, but no. The t-shirt design pitches that twisted old man whispered to that woman to relate to me were some of the most depraved things I’ve ever heard in my life. There was one involving a catheter and an orphanage that will haunt my nightmares forever. We like to be edgy at Whack-eyed Tees, but the things this man wanted to print would get us shut down and possibly arrested.
10 years ago Lawrence would have made the top of this list in a heartbeat, but he’s a little too stuck in the VICE era to make it in today’s t-shirt game.
If this guy couldn’t beat Jeryd Mencken in an election, how is he going to help me push out those yahoos over at Patriot Tees?
“I went for three jobs, I didn’t get them, my vineyard was a write-off and now my trophy wife is sucking some waiter’s dick in Palermo and all I got was 
Hugo’s inept opportunism is the opposite of what we need, and his t-shirt pitches left something to be desired as well. One was a dog with his face saying “
The Used’s seventh record “The Canyon” is almost universally known by the group’s fans as a meh and way-too-long misstep for the band, but 2017 itself had a huge gaffe and was doomed from the start being that it was Trump’s first year as President of the United States, which seems to have really worked out for him. Anyway, this is The Used’s sole effort produced by nu-metal paladin Ross Robinson, the record doesn’t get repeated spins over and over again, but it still has some solid tunes.
2012’s “Vulnerable,” The Used’s fifth studio album, is the band’s first non-major label LP effort and hit stores almost exactly ten years after the four-piece’s breakout debut. While it is (wait for it, wait for it) a VULNERABLE-in-the-best-way overall listen, and “I Come Alive” is a hell of an opening track, the remaining eleven songs sadly aren’t in the same league overall, and provided the act with less of a chance to shine. It’s hard for any band with such an expansive catalog to consistently wow everyone, but “This Fire” and “Now That You’re Dead” are both literal bangers and silver medal song entries even though, as Ricky Bobby said in a different fashion, “Second place is the first loser.” Still, you should check both of those tracks out again, and immediately thereafter shake/bake!
Real talk that may cause force without violence: “Cry” is the band’s best post-major label single from 2010-the present day, and we’re not taking any further questions on the matter, as our love is not a battle, it’s a ticking time bomb. Yeah. 2014’s “Imaginary Enemy” is The Used’s best Hopeless Records release, and despite the fact that you didn’t realize that the band had a song newer than 2004’s “All That I Got,” it even charted at number one on the Independent albums chart. That’s not make believe! Said stat probably caught you off guard as you’re so deep. In closing, this album is also longtime guitarist Quinn Allman’s last with the band.
This album from The Used definitely has the band’s best LP title and album cover. “Toxic Positivity” has a solid flow front-to-back and features a diverse array of tones and textures throughout its eleven fruitful tracks. Speaking of the word “fruitful,” there’s nothing toxic about cherries unless you’re allergic to them. The prior sentence makes sense (as well as so many other brilliant ones here) if you deep dive into the band’s colorful catalog, which is so much more than strictly blue and yellow. Sky. Pee. Toxic positivity. Easter eggs are great for our headspace. Anyway, this album is the band’s shortest full-length, with no individual song being longer than three-minutes and thirty-five seconds, so if a particular tune offends you, and we know that at least one or more will for you punk rockers, you can make it through the rest quite quickly instead of giving up.
There were two eras of the early part of the pandemic (or plandemic if you nasty): The oft-forgotten-like-his-character-in-“Castaway” Tom Hanks’ self-quarantine period in Daniel Johns’ Australia, where The Used vocalist Bert McCracken currently resides, and the impossible-to-erase-from-your-mind-no-matter-how-hard-you-try rise of Netflix’s incomparable sleeper hit “The Tiger King’.’ 2020’s “Heartwork,” the band’s best non-major label release, was released shortly after the big, wanna-be Joe Exotic’s original “country” music caused the internet to have a permanent bloody nose from the metaphorical accident known as his two LPs. What a weird time to be alive! In closing, “Heartwork” is current guitarist Joey Bradford’s debut effort with the band, and the four-piece’s first for label Big Noise.
Fun fact: The band originally wanted to work with Weezer’s extremely lovable/hateable/revered/doomed frontman Rivers Cuomo on their fourth album “Artwork,” but ended up not exactly settling with platinum-and-then-some-producer Matt Squire for this one, the band’s first non-John Feldmann production effort. This eleven-song record is without question the band’s best sans Feldy, and their most underrated body of work altogether. Sadly, it seems that this album’s then-label Reprise Records showcased that they were born to quit just as the album cycle started, as the band had a chance to release only one single from “Artwork” before the suits quietly gave up on the other ten songs and the entire LP as a whole. We suppose that the relationship between Reprise and The Used was meant to die a short and painless death after a lucrative run, but there will be forever blood on the hands of the conglomerate label. You cigar-toting bigwigs with no semblance of taste know who you are!
Lunacy fringe from us: For the next three LPs listed, we don’t recommend skipping ANY tracks, so read on, loser. The Used’s second album “In Love and Death” is their biggest seller to date, but it’s set in stone in the bronze medal spot here, and could stay a while. If you feel differently, your opinion is wrong. That blunt posit wasn’t hard to say, and moving forward, you need to update yesterday’s feelings with more quality control. Anyway, if you were at a tour date for this record in the fall of 2004 with The Bronx, Head Automatica, and Atreyu opening like we were, you were both on the right side of the bed and history. This frenetic-in-the-best-way album was eventually reissued with an Adam Lambert feature on a My Chemical Romance cover with Bert Bowie, but smart and astute readers like you already knew that.
This one’s a ripper: 2007’s “Lies for the Liars,” The Used’s third studio record and first without current Rancid drummer Branden Steineckert, is a extremely diverse and beyond solid introduction to the band for those who missed the first two LPs for whatever reason and/or were born after Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson. We stand by our 100% factual opinion that this record is their second most underrated just after its follow-up “Artwork,” and hope to find a way for you to feel exactly the same about this non-subjective point of possible but unjustified contention. The record sounds like it utilized the biggest budget allotted to the band over the course of its twenty-plus year career in the best way, as it sounds HUGE AF and so, so lush. The four-piece pulled out all the stops on this one, that’s for sure! Time has been kind to this album as it still holds up like the next-to-be-mentioned AND kills.
A post-9/11 concert trump card was witnessing The Used open for H2O as direct support and Box Car Racer in the headlining slot on their only fully national tour. If we’re being honest, it’s a daring, daring move to have your debut album be a self-titled one, but The Used excels in Word’s bold and italic fonts. This may get us canceled, but so will everything that we say and don’t say: The Used’s 2002 LP known as “The Used” is one of the best debut rock albums to be released this century and that wasn’t meant to be funny. If you have any further questions, you’re gonna have to ask nicer than that.