Bill Wurtz

Bill Wurtz (stylized in lower case as bill wurtz or billwurtz) is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and online video creator based in New York City. He is known for his distinctive musical, comedic, and narrative style which includes deadpan delivery and singing paired with colorful surrealist, psychedelic, and non-sequitur graphics.
Wurtz first published material on YouTube in 2013. He set up a website in 2014, presenting a catalog of music and videos he had created since 2002. Wurtz proceeded to upload edited versions of his videos on Vine, where he gained his initial popularity. He experienced breakout success on YouTube with his animated videos, "History of Japan" (2016), and "History of the Entire World, I Guess" (2017). Wurtz released music videos regularly from 2017 to March 2019. Through the rest of 2019 and all of 2020 Wurtz was inactive on YouTube, revamping his setup for video creation, but returned to the platform in January 2021 with a new visual style of 3D animation.
Notable projects and videos.
Vine videos.
Wurtz was first known for his presence on the short-form video-sharing website Vine, where he first gained a following in 2014. He began by taking short videos he had previously published to his website and re-editing them to fit Vine's six-second restriction. Before transitioning fully to YouTube, Wurtz was uploading a video to Vine nearly every day. He received early attention in 2015 for the short video "Shaving My Piano", which was covered briefly in "The Verge". On April 11, 2016, Wurtz won the Shorty Award for "Tech & Innovation: Weird" at the 8th Shorty Awards; during the awards ceremony, attention was given to one of his Vine uploads "I'm Still a Piece of Garbage". His acceptance speech for the award was notably curt, as he walked up to the mic, said "Thank you", and immediately walked off the stage. He has stated in a video on his website that this was directly inspired by an acceptance speech given by André 3000.
"History of Japan".
Alongside interest on Vine, Wurtz achieved wider popularity in 2016 with "History of Japan", a nine-minute YouTube video that outlines Japan's history. The video covers key events of its history: "Buddhism, internal conflict, alliances with Britain, World Wars I and II, the dropping of atomic bombs and its post-war economic miracle". It showcases Wurtz's quirky visual and comedic style through a mixture of fast-paced narration and animation, intercut with short musical jingles. The video was described as "an entertaining new approach to education". It went viral on social media after its release on February 2, 2016, and under a week later, received over four million views by February 8. It particularly received considerable attention on Tumblr and Reddit. As of April 2021, the video boasts over 65 million views. Writer German Lopez for the news website "Vox" called it a "strange", "pretty good – and surprisingly funny" video. Nevertheless, Lopez noted the poor coverage of Japanese war crimes committed against Korea and China in the 20th century, particularly the Nanjing Massacre and the use of Korean sex slaves, and attributed this omission to the video's short runtime. Wurtz has responded to these criticisms on his questions page, suggesting to viewers to look for other YouTube channels that cover these topics.
"History of the Entire World, I Guess".
Wurtz is best known for "History of the Entire World, I Guess", a 20-minute follow-up to "History of Japan" released on May 10, 2017. Expanding greatly on the subject matter – the video took over 11 months to produce, including almost 3 months of research – it briefly covers the topics of natural history and human civilization spanning from the Big Bang to the near future. Like its predecessor, the video features short "jazzy" musical interludes, which were compared to Thundercat's album "Drunk".
"History of the Entire World, I Guess" was the top video on the YouTube trending page on the day of its release, receiving 3.2 million views on its first day, and on Reddit it became the most upvoted YouTube link of all time. It became an Internet meme and was listed at eighth place on YouTube's list of the top 10 trending videos of the year. it has over 119 million views. Writer German Lopez for the news website "Vox" praised the video for not heavily focusing on western and US history, and successfully covering other areas in world history which may be neglected in US schools, such as powers in China, Persia, and India. It has been called a "must-see" and is considered to be Wurtz's magnum opus. In 2020, "Thrillist" ranked the video at number 40 on its list of best YouTube videos of all time.
Music videos.
Following the production of the history videos, Wurtz turned his attention to releasing music videos. Between August 21 and December 25, 2018, he released a new song and music video every two weeks, for a total of nine. Having taken up to fourteen weeks to make videos before this point, Wurtz characterized the new schedule as a breakthrough, a "training exercise to increase the quality in ways I never would have found otherwise". Wurtz has since decided to create a music video for every new song he releases, despite it slowing down his songwriting considerably.
Wurtz's song "Just Did a Bad Thing" and the accompanying video spawned TikTok videos of people lip-syncing to the opening lines; in the platform, #ididabadthing became the top hashtag of March 2019. Following this, Wurtz would only post four more videos before his break, ending with "Might Quit". After the "Might Quit" video was released, Wurtz would not post any new videos to YouTube for nearly two years. He stated that he was working on content, but took longer to create them since he was in the process of learning new video editing and 3D animation software, including Blender.
On January 18, 2021, Wurtz released the music video for a new original song "Here Comes the Sun," utilizing the 3D software he had been learning. About two months later, on March 23, 2021, he published his second 3D animated music video, "I'm a Princess". On April 19, 2021, he released "Got Some Money", a music video that mixed 2D and 3D elements.
Style.
Wurtz has developed an absurdist, surreal style on both his music and animation. Eddie Kim wrote for "MEL Magazine" that Wurtz "refuses to mimic anyone else's animation or musical style, but it's not weird for weirdness' sake alone", comparing him to Thundercat and Louis Cole and highlighting Wurtz's pretty pop melodies, unexpected chords and multi-layered rhythms as commonalities. Geoff Carter of "Las Vegas Weekly" stated: "Merge Don Hertzfeldt, Jenny Holzer and Thundercat and you might get someone a little bit like Bill Wurtz". Nick Douglas of "Lifehacker" summarized him as "somewhere between comedy and education and vaporwave."
Music.
Wurtz's music has been classified as jazz-pop, incorporating elements of lo-fi music, smooth jazz, funk and easy listening. Despite this, Wurtz tends to reject genre categorization, and does not consider himself to be a jazz musician. Overall, his music evokes malaise, self-deprecation, and a "blurring of the lines between irony, parody and honesty". This is often paired comedically with dire circumstances or sobering undertones. In an interview with Genius, Wurtz stated that "it's a good... songwriting technique to write about something bad with a good sounding melody, because if you can get people to feel good about something bad, then you're bulletproof in life." Wurtz's voice has been described as "silky tenor with range and energy". Artists who have expressed admiration for Wurtz's music include indie musicians Daði Freyr and Sidney Gish, fellow YouTube musician Adam Neely, DJ and producer Porter Robinson, as well as Australian singer Sia.
Wurtz started playing music at a very early age. He has claimed to be "wholly self-taught" as a musician, and regularly downplays the importance of music theory in songwriting and composition, insisting that the sound and feeling of music should be prioritized over attempts to conform to theory. In fact, one of the defining characteristics of Wurtz's style is a subversion to conventional approaches to composition. One example is "I Wanna Be a Movie Star", highlighted in an article for the student newspaper "The Harbinger," where the author praised Wurtz's skill in incorporating complex time signatures without causing the music to feel "either incomplete or too long", instead achieving a sound that "feel[s] completely natural" and "pop-ish".
Wurtz has used different programs to edit his music, including GarageBand from 2009 to 2010, and long-discontinued Logic Express 9 until at least 2016.
Videos.
Wurtz's videos are typically in a lo-fi, neon aesthetic, and have been described as surreal and psychedelic. They range from "nonsensical" shorts to animated music videos, and often involve deadpan humor, dancing stick figures, vaporwave-like transitions and neon, sans-serif text on-screen. Wurtz often follows similar patterns in his videos such as multi-layering, including screenshots of built-in macOS applications such as TextEdit, along with clip art images, and showing himself playing "air drums", overlaying images where the drumheads would be. He has stated the low-budget quality arose out of a necessity to publish videos regularly and evolved naturally.
At Vidcon 2018, Wurtz was asked why his style is so different from other YouTube musicians. He stated that he chooses to "live under a rock" and produce his music in isolation rather than take inspiration from other creators on the platform. He explains further on his website that one of his most important goals is to "go my own way and deliver things that challenge and defy... expectations". Wurtz publicly struggles with perfectionism, making use of schedules and deadlines to overcome it. In response to a fan question he explained that in the process of doing this he has "been forced to become an expert on carelessness".
Wurtz is decidedly against running advertising on or accepting sponsorships for his videos, despite admitting an "enormous" pressure to do so. He has explained that advertisements make him "uncomfortable" and that he thinks they "suck". As a result, all of Wurtz's videos and music are available for free on his website. Wurtz does receive direct fan support, which includes crowdfunding on Patreon, streams on music streaming services, and merchandise sales, but does not heavily promote any of these revenue streams.
From his first video up until early 2019, Wurtz used Final Cut Express 4, a program that was discontinued as far back as in 2011. In 2019, he switched to the more modern software Final Cut Pro X. Wurtz also taught himself the 3D animation software Blender, which enabled him to create significantly more complex and realistic graphics for his videos.
Website.
While Wurtz has a larger audience on external platforms like YouTube, he is the most active on his own website, billwurtz.com. Despite being launched in 2014, it has been compared to a late 1990s website due to its simple design. Apart from containing all of his released songs and most of his videos dating back since 2002, the website also features many other types of content not available elsewhere. This includes a questions page, as well as an anagram page, where Wurtz allows fans to request words or phrases out of which he creates anagrams. Additionally, Wurtz has posted audio clips of musical improvisation, jazz covers, original instrumental tracks, artifacts related to or originating from video production, as well as vlog-style 'reality' videos depicting his creative process. Wurtz used to have a music videos page; but merged it into the videos page because most of his videos featured music, so the distinction was unclear; however, the page is still available to view on his website.
Questions page.
Bill Wurtz maintains a section on his website to answer anonymously submitted questions. Wurtz used to have an Ask.fm page, but he discontinued it and created his own questions page to allow for complete anonymous questions and to avoid ads. His answers to questions are considered an aspect of Wurtz's creative output; the style of his answers have been described as "verging on the poetic" and "earnest, if somewhat loopy-sounding". The first question was posted on May 10, 2015, and the list of questions and answers has been updated nearly every day. One such answer, highlighted in by the website "Ok Whatever", addresses a question concerning Wurtz's personality:
Reality page.
Wurtz continuously keeps an audio journal, frequently recording himself explaining his thoughts, frustrations, and breakthroughs. Following his "History of Japan" project in early 2016, Wurtz proceeded to take three months off to take the recordings saved up to that point and turn them into videos, adding elements such as text and screenshots to the audio. These are now available on the "reality" section of his website. The earliest available video is based on an audio recording from November 16, 2010, and as of August 2019, a total of 251 videos have been released. Wurtz has confirmed that he is planning to create "1000s more" in the future. Wurtz has justified the reality project by stating that it is "a way of coaxing [himself] into success at a mountain-movingly hard project" and that it keeps him "calm and organized". He also expressed that "first hand documentary materials should surely be of very high value".
Collaborations.
For most of his career Wurtz has maintained a solo approach to his music. However, since 2019, Wurtz has appeared on two videos involving the LA-based cover band Scary Pockets (a band of Jack Conte and Ryan Lerman), playing drums in a funk cover of the song "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League on March 11, 2019, and "You Get What You Give" by New Radicals on April 1, 2019. In a response to a fan question, Wurtz later expressed his desire to continue recording with other artists, claiming that he has become "insanely sick of himself" and that he is "desperate to collaborate with as many people as possible".
Discography.
Music videos.
Since March 2014, Wurtz has published numerous full-length music videos, following the same format of his shorter videos. He has made them available on his YouTube channel:
Other songs.
Wurtz has published many other full-length songs not accompanied by music videos. They are all available on his website, and some are also available on streaming services. Songs include:
2009
2010
2011
2014
2017
Furthermore, Wurtz has published a myriad of shorter songs or jingles on his website ranging from a couple of seconds to up to a minute in length.