It was such an unassuming video that I likely skipped it the first five times the YouTube algorithm presented it to me. But eventually, I gave into its charms. The algorithm had to be recommending it to me for some reason.
Yep, back at this again.
I made the right choice by giving into that video. It ended up shaping how I perceived 2024 in a real way.
The video for “War Isn’t Murder,” coming amid the confusing and politically charged chaos of the Israel–Hamas war, shouldn’t have left such an imprint, but Jesse Welles, an Arkansas music-industry second-chancer who found a new place in the world when he decided to use his significant musical skills in service of “singing journalism,” made an impression on me that day, and from there, he has made an impression throughout 2024.
From that auspicious start, guarded enough that Welles blocked comments on that first video (lest he let those comments turn into an ugly political debate), he has found fans of his message, built around vintage trappings and high-tech distribution.
Welles makes otherwise-prolific songwriters like Adrianne Lenker seem slow in comparison: The musician has published 85 videos and two shorts on YouTube in the past eight months, most of them original songs, with a handful of covers. He has also released two full-length albums and an EP. You are not lacking for musical options if you want to listen to Jesse Welles.
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He has a YouTube audience of 220,000, which sounds like a lot until you hear it’s not even his biggest platform: On TikTok, he recently topped 1 million followers, and Instagram, he sits at 925,000.
While some songs have gone more viral than others—his healthcare CEO shooting commentary “United Health” broke through enough that he actually got name-dropped by Rolling Stone, Mediaite, The New Yorker, and Joe Rogan—it’s the first YouTube video that remains the one that defines his identity. The clip drew a million views on YouTube alone, and its spiky condemnation of the language of combat was the script upon which every other song was written.
The cliché about folk singers is that they all sound like Bob Dylan. Welles isn’t like that—he looks like John Fogerty, writes like Phil Ochs, and sounds like John Prine. He doesn’t fit in one box.
And despite his vintage veneer, he appears to be at the vanguard of how we consume music in 2024. Despite this, it felt like a purely underground movement. For months, I joked that it was basically me and Saving Country Music that were talking this guy up with our media presences. Pitchfork and Stereogum basically passed on covering this dude, which surprised me. (My offer stands.) But while “United Health” forced pockets of the mainstream to notice him, it does feel like the outlets which used to live and breathe stuff like this just let a real movement pass them by, choosing instead to focus on more-fun-but-less-impactful stories like the diss-track battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake (which Kendrick deservedly won).
Welles has quietly expanded his presence outside the remote fields and walled-garden digital landscapes into the real world, taking his songs on tour and at settings like Farm Aid, where Dave Matthews called him “one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”
His first tour sold out quickly. So did his second. And all the while, he has been making time for new songs performed in forests and on farmland. He’s even inspired others to follow suit—Jordan Smart’s “Who Would Jesus Bomb” is another spiky standout in this era of protest music as a service.
While many of his songs are political, not all of them are. “War Isn’t Murder” is my favorite song of his from 2024, but if I had to pick a second-place, it would be “Hold On,” a song that hit amid some significant setbacks to the trans-rights movement. It has good bones, and it tells a universal story. Plus, he actually gets to show off the quality of his voice in a less sing-speak setting.
Seeing someone start from basically nothing and become a phenomenon in a handful of months is something I’ve seen a few times over the years. Welles has impressed more than most—he could have been a single-video flash in the pan, as many creators often are. But instead, he just kept creating, building a body of work that responded in real time to the many issues affecting our country, while ensuring the work had enough timelessness that it doesn’t feel like it will disappear in five minutes.
If it’s not clear already, Jesse Welles’ “War Isn’t Murder” is Tedium’s YouTube video of 2024. And he has plenty more where that came from.
Runners-Up
After 34 Years, Someone Finally Beat Tetris: This clip from aGameScout is technically from 2023, but it was published at the very end of the year (literally, December 31st), after we had already published our Best YouTube Video tally last year. Still worthy of a note. The Tetris scene really had a breakthrough this year as players began pushing the limits of the NES classic, but things really went nuts thanks to Blue Scuti, whose story of perseverance tugged at a few heartstrings at the start of this year.
Phil Collins: Drummer First: There were a lot of pretty epic YouTube videos that closed out the year, including a takedown of Honey and a clip highlighting the many steps a gaming enthusiast took to recover a gigantic CRT. The number of great options out there were many. But I have a soft spot in my heart for this video checking out the long career of Phil Collins from the perspective in which he started—as a drummer. An epic clip, and one that highlights how his son Nic has really come to follow in his footsteps in a real way. After a tough year, it was joyful to appreciate this absolute legend’s career.
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Congrats to everyone who got picked in this year’s list. (Here’s a link to share.) Have a few you’d like to add? I just kicked off threads on Bluesky and Mastodon. Would be curious to hear what you’d add.
