Bill Wurtz is back and better than ever, pushing boundaries into the third dimension. Wurtz, who many may know from widely reaching videos like “history of the entire world, i guess,” is a content creator and musician whose roots took place all the way back in 2005. His trademark absurdist style of both music and videography took hold throughout the 2010s on YouTube and the discontinued Vine, often taking the form of short 5-30 second videos accompanied by jazzy jingles like the video, “still a piece of garbage.” Aside from these shorter pieces, Wurtz would occasionally create fully-fledged music videos for songs like “La de da de da de da de day oh” and “Mount St. Helens is about to Blow Up.”
That all came to a halt in Mar. 2019 with the release of his music video “might quit.” Following the release of that video, in what Wurtz calls a “terrible coincidence,” the “bill wurtz” YouTube channel grinded to a screeching halt and Wurtz stopped posting to Twitter. While he was still active on his website’s somewhat obscure Q&A section, to most of his millions of fans, he had disappeared seemingly overnight. This all changed one day last January with the release of “here comes the sun.”
To say I was surprised to see a Bill Wurtz video after so long would be an understatement. The song, musically speaking, fits right in with past work of Wurtz’s, featuring the same jazz-fusion stylings seen in most of his longer-form music videos. That said, the visuals of this music video mark a new chapter in Bill Wurtz’s style: they’re in 3D, animated using the free modeling software Blender. While many aspects of his visuals are consistent with his older works, such as his doodles and typography, the 3D elements and lighting add a new depth, both literally and figuratively, to this video.
Lyrically, the song is an exploration into human emotion using the sun to symbolize happiness and light. It features lyrics like “when darkness covers the Earth and I know it’s the end for sure, here comes the sun,” just to give a taste of the song’s themes. This type of lyrical content is by no means unexpected, as many of Wurtz’s other songs delve into his inner psyche.
Overall, this song marks a triumphant return of a legend, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. According to his website, Wurtz is already working on his next masterpiece, which he says will take “a reasonable amount of time.” Hopefully that is sooner rather than later.