Bill Wurtz

About

Bill Wurtz is an American musician and video blogger well-known for his short and memorable one-line jingles set to ’80s-inspired animation videos. Due to the absurdist nature and comedic value of the videos, Wurtz has garnered a sizable online following on various social media platforms, most notably on Vine and YouTube.

Online History

On December 29th, 2010, Wurtz launched his official website under the domain BillWurtz.com with a multimedia portfolio of his original songs, videos and writings; however, some of his files may had previously been hosted elsewhere, as his earliest works in the collection date all the way back to 2005. On February 17th, 2012, Wurtz joined YouTube, although he didn’t upload his first one-line jingle video titled “Die” (shown below) until well over a year later on September 9th, 2013.

On June 6th, 2014, Wurtz created a Vine account and uploaded a video titled “6.6.14 hi vine,” in which he records himself lying on a bed and mindlessly mumbling “dude, there’s no way I can do this Vine thing” (shown below).

History of Japan

On February 2nd, 2016, Wurtz uploaded a video titled “history of japan,” in which the musician sings a humorously abridged narrative of Japan’s history, starting from the year 40,000 BC to the modern day (shown below). In just a day over three weeks, the video accumulated more than five million views and over 180,000 likes, which has resulted in a sudden spike in Google search interest and media exposure of his works across the blogosphere..

Online Presence

The most comprehensive collection of Wurtz’ writings, songs and videos can be found on his website, as well as on a number of other social media platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, Google+ and Vine, as well as the music streaming services like YouTube, iTunes and Spotify. Furthermore, Wurtz maintains an Ask FM account for questions and answers, as well as a Paypal page for donations. As of February 2016, Wurtz has garnered more than 162,000 subscribers on YouTube, 124,000 followers on Vine, 8,200 followers on Twitter and 2,300 followers on Instagram.

Accolades

On January 19th, 2016, Wurtz was listed as a nominee for the “Best in Weird” category in the eighth annual Shorty Awards^[15], which he went on to win during the contest’s April 11th livestream.^[16]

Highlights

As of February 2016, Bill Wurtz’ YouTube channel has accumulated nearly 13 million views in aggregate, with nearly half of those views solely generated by his breakout video “History of Japan,” and at least six other videos that have garnered over a million views in aggregate.

Writings

In addition to his short jingles and graphic art videos, Wurtz has maintained a short-form online journal under the “notebook”^[5] section of his website, which consists of a chronological series of timestamped entries featuring micro-poems and aphorisms. Since joining Twitter and Instagram, Wurtz has also re-published select entries from his notebook via his social media accounts.