Songfacts®:

• Unlike many of his songs, there's no mention of a party in Andrew W.K.'s "Music Is Worth Living For." The song, though, hits on one of his main themes: The power of music you give you strength and purpose.
  
  He called the song an "exaltation of my love for music itself," adding, "It's also me pleading with myself to recognize music's eternal power and glory, in the face of hardship and pain. The song is an effort to remind myself that life is worth living, if for no other reason than because of the beauty music conveys."
• Andrew W.K. has fought feelings of depression for much of his life, and he uses music as a means to fight it. That's not always apparent in songs like "Party Hard" and "Long Live The Party," but for him the party represents his freest form of expression, a positive mindset that can act as a guide.
  
  "Music Is Worth Living For" is more explicit in the message:
  
  The only way that I'll survive
  Music makes me want to stay alive
  
  "The lyrics of this song, especially in the verses, are me calling out my own interior negative forces – the lowest and darkest impulses inside me, that wish to hold me down in despair – and I'm telling those malevolent urges once and for all that they won't break me," he explained. "I will persevere. And when I triumph, somehow, someday, it will be because of music."
  
  "This song is a celebration of that essential and divine life-force that music is both emanating from and emitting to us," he added. "This song is about how good music makes it feel to not be dead. As the last line of the chorus proclaims, 'Music makes me want to stay alive.' That's probably the truest lyric I've ever written."
• "Music Is Worth Living For" was the first single from Andrew W.K.'s 2018 album You're Not Alone, which not counting an album of piano instrumentals he released in 2009, was his first album since 2006.
• Andrew W.K. had an advice column in The Village Voice that ran a few years before he released this song. One letter he answered came from a fan who said he saved his life by giving him a sense of hope with his music and words. In Andrew's response, he made it clear that the fan saved his own life, writing:
  
  "Any inspiration you think you got from my work was actually already inside you all along. My work maybe helped you remember that you already had the key, but it still took your efforts to use that key and unlock your own power."
  
  This is a similar message he conveys in this song: the strength to carry on comes from inside. Andrew can help you find it, but you'll have to discover it on your own.
• About a month after this song was released, Andrew W.K. was recognized by American Association Of Suicidology as their Person Of The Year for his "consistent and powerful use of positivity to improve the lives of those who hear his music."
  
  He was grateful for the honor, stating: "From a young age, I felt consistently uneasy in the world, and thus began an ongoing search for something to quell the sense of wrongness inside of me. I was lucky enough to discover a life's work which not only transmuted my darker tendencies into something brighter and more deserving of my energy, but also allowed me to amplify and share that quest with others. In my mission to find joyful meaning in life, I never imagined my rock and roll destiny would become a source of inspiration for those who also dwelled in the shadows."