Bill Wurtz
Bill Wurtz is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and online video creator based in New York City. He is known for his distinctive musical 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 short-form video-sharing website Vine, where he enjoyed initial popularity. He experienced breakout success on YouTube with his animated documentaries, history of japan, and history of the entire world, i guess.
Wurtz has been inactive on YouTube since March 2019. He states that he is currently working on videos, but is taking longer to create them since he is in the process of learning new video editing software.
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. 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 entirely intentional, having been 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 August 2, 2020, the video boasts over 58 million views.''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. It went viral after its release. Writer German Lopez for the news website Vox praised the documentary 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 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 became the most upvoted YouTube link in Reddit history. It was listed at eighth place on YouTube's list of the top 10 trending videos of 2017. it has over 95 million views. It has been described as Wurtz's magnum opus.In February 2019, Wurtz uploaded "Wild Frolicking Adventures of Informational Education", a shorter video implicitly referencing his previous history documentaries. Wurtz haphazardly explains the capitals and iconography of countries before abruptly joking about the "vast spiritual emptiness of doing a video without a topic".
Music videos
After finishing the history videos, music videos became a prominent part of Wurtz's creative output. Between August 21 and December 25, 2018, a total of nine songs with music videos were released. During this time period, Wurtz worked under a two-week schedule, releasing a new song and music video every two weeks. This was a breakthrough, since they previously could take up to 14 weeks to make. He described the schedule as a "training exercise to increase the quality in ways I never would have found otherwise". Wurtz is still actively making music videos and has opted to create a music video for every new song he releases, despite it slowing down his songwriting considerably.Style
Wurtz employs a lo-fi jazz-pop style in his music, incorporating elements of smooth jazz, funk and easy listening. 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.Wurtz is entirely self-taught as a musician, and has not admitted to any formal training. He has professed a cautious approach to music theory, insisting that the sound and feeling of music should be prioritised over attempts to conform to theory. A writer for the student newspaper The Haribinger identified the song i wanna be a movie star as example of Wurtz subverting typical approaches to composition, opting to use a mixture of unusual time signatures at the risk of sounding "either incomplete or too long". This is claimed as notable due the song instead managing to "feel completely natural" and "pop-ish", despite most pop music conforming to common time.
Wurtz's videos are typically in a neon aesthetic, and have been described as surreal and psychedelic. They often involve deadpan humour, dancing stick figures, neon lyrics on-screen, and vaporwave-like transitions. 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 that this basic style arose out of a necessity to publish content regularly, and evolved naturally. From his first video up until early 2019, Wurtz created his videos using 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.
At Vidcon 2018, Wurtz answered a question about why his style is so different from other YouTube musicians. He explained that he doesn't watch any other creators on the platform. Instead, he simply does what he thinks is normal. "My secret is just live under a rock, and stay there," he said. He states 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 has struggled with perfectionism, and is actively trying to overcome it by creating schedules and setting deadlines for himself. In response to a fan question he explained that in the process of overcoming perfectionism he has "been forced to become an expert on carelessness".
Furthermore, Wurtz is known for his unwillingness to run advertising on his content, or accept sponsorships, even though he admitted the pressure to do so is "enormous". He has explained that advertisements make him "uncomfortable" and that he thinks they "suck". All of Wurtz's content is available for free on his website. Wurtz receives direct fan support, which include crowdfunding on Patreon streams on music streaming services, and merchandise sales. However, he does not heavily promote any of these revenue streams.
Website
While Wurtz has a larger audience on external platforms like YouTube, he is still the most active on his own website, billwurtz.com. It was launched in 2014 but has been described as looking like it was made in the late 1990s 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 both with vocal and vocal with music usually being piano or keyboard, jazz covers, original instrumental tracks, as well as vlog-style 'reality' videos depicting his creative process.Questions page
Bill Wurtz maintains a section on this website to answer anonymously submitted questions. His answers to questions is 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 has since been usually updated daily. 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. One answer addresses a question concerning Wurtz's personality, which has been identified as an example interaction on the questions page:Reality page
Wurtz continuously keeps an audio journal, frequently recording himself explaining his creative thoughts, frustrations, and breakthroughs. About three to four years after the recording date he proceeds to go through the old recordings, taking the highlights and editing them into short clips, as well as adding video elements like text and screenshots. The clips are published under the 'reality' section on Wurtz's website. Wurtz started turning his audio recordings into reality videos after finishing his history of japan project in early 2016. He proceeded to take three months off all other work to edit audio entries recorded between 2010 and 2016, turning them into reality videos. The earliest available reality video is based on an audio recording from November 16, 2010, and as of August 2019, a total of 251 reality 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 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
Wurtz is known as a solo artist, usually playing all the instruments in his songs himself. In the past, Wurtz rarely publicly recorded with other musicians. However, he has expressed a desire to start collaborating more, stating that he "has become insanely sick of himself" and that he is "desperate to collaborate with as many people as possible".On March 11, 2019, Wurtz appeared on drums in a video by the cover band Scary Pockets. They performed a funk cover of the song "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League. On April 1, 2019, he played drums on another Scary Pockets cover, this time of the song "You Get What You Give" by New Radicals.
Awards
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
| 2016 | Shorty Awards | Tech & Innovation: Best in Weird | Bill Wurtz |
Discography
Music videos
Since May 2014 Wurtz has published numerous full-length music videos, following the same format of his shorter videos. He made them available on his YouTube channel:| Year | Name | Views |
| 2014 | "new canaan" | 0.6 |
| 2014 | "i like" | 0.3 |
| 2014 | "hey jodie foster" | 0.1 |
| 2015 | "i'm crazy / it's raining" | 1.2 |
| 2015 | "you're free to do whatever you want to" | 1.6 |
| 2015 | "i don't wanna go to school" | 8.2 |
| 2016 | "alphabet shuffle" | 6.3 |
| 2017 | "i wanna be a movie star" | 3.6 |
| 2017 | "outside" | 5.2 |
| 2018 | "La de da de da de da de day oh" | 10.3 |
| 2018 | "and the day goes on" | 6.0 |
| 2018 | "hello sexy pants" | 2.7 |
| 2018 | "hallelujah" | 1.5 |
| 2018 | "i'm Best Friends with my Own Front Door" | 2.2 |
| 2018 | "Mount St. Helens is about to Blow Up" | 5.7 |
| 2018 | "the Moon is made of Cheese " | 2.3 |
| 2018 | "When I Get Older" | 1.8 |
| 2018 | "long long long journey" | 2.1 |
| 2018 | "Slow Down" | 1.6 |
| 2018 | "christmas isn't real" | 1.7 |
| 2018 | "i just did a bad thing" | 5.5 |
| 2019 | "at the airport terminal" | 2.0 |
| 2019 | "might quit" | 7.1 |
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
- "the song song"
2011
2014
2017
- "in california"
- "i love you"
- "got to know what's going on"