For most artists, a debut album marks the beginning of a career. For Andy Koh, it represents nearly four decades of songwriting, reflection, and lived experience finally finding its voice.
Best known professionally as a pediatric oncologist, Koh has spent his life caring for children and families facing unimaginable challenges. Alongside that calling, he quietly continued writing songs—some dating back to his undergraduate years at Harvard in the late 1980s. Now, those songs come together on Taking the Long Way, an album that bridges youthful optimism with the wisdom earned through decades of love, loss, resilience, and hope.
Leading the project is “Everything,” an uplifting anthem that reminds us the most meaningful moments in life often happen while we’re busy looking ahead.
We spoke with Andy about revisiting songs decades later, balancing medicine and music, and why hope isn’t always about certainty.
“Everything” is an anthem about embracing the present. Was there a specific moment in your life that made that message feel especially urgent or meaningful?
Yes.
When my wife began developing serious, chronic health issues, it forced me to reconsider my roles both as a spouse and as a professional caregiver.
Working in pediatric oncology has repeatedly reminded me that the future is never guaranteed and that the most important things in life are often happening right in front of us while we’re busy planning what comes next.
That perspective became especially meaningful when I returned to this song decades after first writing it. I had changed, my circumstances had changed, and enough time had passed for me to understand that life is rarely black and white.
“Everything” became less about waiting for some perfect romantic ideal and more about recognizing that the journey—and how we navigate difficult times together—is what really matters.
As someone whose career has been dedicated to caring for children with cancer, you’ve witnessed both extraordinary resilience and profound loss. How has that perspective shaped the themes of hope, gratitude, and perseverance that run throughout your songwriting?
I’ve learned that hope isn’t always believing everything will turn out the way we want.
Sometimes hope is simply finding a reason to keep moving through life—to get through the next hour or the next day.
Perseverance is often quiet, and it can be very lonely.
Gratitude can exist alongside fear, grief, and uncertainty, and I think it’s important to make room for all of those things.
The children and families I’ve cared for have taught me that people are capable of extraordinary strength. But strength doesn’t mean pretending something is easy.
That perspective has deeply influenced the way I write. I’m drawn to songs that acknowledge difficulty without surrendering to it—songs that recognize the anxiety, insecurity, and fear we all experience while still reaching toward connection, hope, and meaning.
Your debut album arrives after decades of writing rather than at the beginning of your career. What do you hope listeners discover in Taking the Long Way that they might not hear on a debut made much earlier in someone’s life?
I hope they hear both the passion and naïveté of the young person who originally wrote many of these songs, alongside the perspective of the older version of myself who finished them and continues writing today.
Many of the earlier songs carry the earnestness, ambition, and emotional intensity of youth. But the album was completed by someone who’s had decades to experience love, disappointment, loss, responsibility, and gratitude.
I didn’t want to erase the younger version of myself or rewrite history by making him seem more polished or self-aware than he really was.
Instead, I wanted to preserve what was honest about those early songs while bringing everything I’ve learned since then into the performances and recordings.
A younger artist’s debut is often about proving who they might become.
This album is more about understanding who I’ve been all along.
That’s what I hope listeners discover in Taking the Long Way.
With Taking the Long Way, Andy Koh reminds us that some stories aren’t diminished by time—they’re enriched by it. Blending the optimism of youth with the compassion and perspective earned through a lifetime spent healing others, his debut is less an introduction than a reflection on everything that happens between where we begin and where we finally arrive. It’s an album that quietly suggests the longest journeys often reveal the deepest truths.
