The name “Jesse Welles” has slowly been appearing more and more across the internet, whether its videos on an app’s For You Page, or an article by the New York Times. Now it’s starting to appear again with a brand new album released just a week ago. He’s best known for his videos of him singing while playing his guitar in the woods, but even with this publicity many people are still wondering: “Who is this person?” and “What’s the fuss about?”

Jesse Welles was born on November 22, 1994, and grew up in Ozark, Arkansas. His legal name is spelled “Jesse Wells” which tends to play a part in many of his stage names, which there has been plenty of. When he started producing music for the first time in 2012, he used platforms like Soundcloud and Bandcamp under the name Jeh Seas Wells. Although this was the first name he used, it actually lasted the longest compared to the other ones, as he continued publishing his songs using this name until 2022. During this time he was in bands such as Dead Indian, which only lasted from 2013-2015, and Cosmic American which only ended up creating 1 EP in 2015. He’s even collaborated with different artists like Mt. Joy. With that being said, he also shared his music while using the name “Welles” from 2017-2022 which was also a music group. In all of these different appearances one thing has stayed the same, and that’s his folk touch to songs especially, his newer ones. Many people compare his new music to John Prine and Bob Dylan which has even caused some controversy. Throughout all these changes, he has used his legal name once more and has seemingly stuck to the current stage name, Jesse Welles, which is the name people think of when they hear his popular political pieces. 

Jesse Welles’ political songs that were published on TikTok is what drew the attention he has today. Currently the TikTok account @jessewelles has 1.2M followers and a grand total of 19M likes which is similar to the amount of attention he gets on Instagram with 1M followers. This is a huge difference in following compared to the attention he was getting with his earlier videos. The first video published on his account was posted 3/11/2023 with only 33K views and just 2,466 likes. Slowly, but surely, as Welles kept posting nearly 1 video every day he started gaining traction especially with the songs “Slaves,” “Cancer,” “The Olympics,” “Trump Trailers,” and most viral “War Isn’t Murder” with 4.4M views. All these songs are very different yet share one common factor, they all had timely, political events and opinions driving them. For example his most popular song, “War Isn’t Murder,” was posted around the time of the time of the height of publicity for the Gaza war and was an ironic, moving piece explaining how “War isn’t murder, good men don’t die” and “War isn’t murder, that’s what they say. When you’re fighting the Devil, murder’s okay.” This song was used to make people think about the reality of war and brought up how people other than the soldiers are affected as well as the future generations through lyrics like “War isn’t murder…children don’t starve and all the women survive” and “So in a short twenty years, when you vacation the strip don’t think about the dead and have a nice trip”. By using the phrase “war isn’t murder,” then following it up with something that contradicts that, made a real impact on people. Many comments were left, either applying the lyrics to their own and their loved ones’ lives or just agreeing with what’s being said. One user underneath his post on TikTok was praising Welles and said “The melancholic perfection of this song. Makes me cry that its true. Gives me hope that you are calling it out”. There were many more comments like this either praising the impactful words or the construction of the song itself. There’s only a few lyrics listed here when the song contains many more that people appreciated, and this is just from one song. His other songs also touch on heavy topics such as cancer, more specifically how the world we’ve created is making us sicker, modern and hidden slavery, and even about our current president Donald Trump.

With these songs, Welles created an album and released it on July 4th, 2024 titled Hells Welles. This album is filled with his taboo political topics stuffed into 21 songs. People were really passionate about his lyrics whether it was negative or positive

thoughts. On Google reviews all of the comments were very positive, with people sharing things like “These songs hook you right off the bat. They captivate with crafty lyrics and melody that speaks of today’s angst that makes sense” and “one of the greatest albums I’ve heard in a while.” On the contrary, in the comment section of Saving Country Musics article  reviewing the album, many people had very mixed reactions to this release. Comments varied from statements such as “Take your Dylan wannabe bullshit, and sit down”, to “Love it! Bought the album to support the artist”. The controversy comes from whether or not these are good topics to write songs about, whether not people agree with these topics, and the quality of the music itself. Whether you enjoy the music or not, it’s apparent that these topics do make people talk and this album sparked a lot of interest from many demographics.

After the big success of his album Hells Welles in 2024, he released another one less than a year later titled Middle on February 21, 2025 which has 12 songs. Middle strays away from current events and more on other important topics like keeping hope but also on events that are just less timely like buying items from countries we ignore and neglect as seen in the song “Horses”. Although the album is slightly different from his former one, people seem to love it just as much and have the same thoughts as before.

Overall, Jesse Welles has made quite the impact for many fans over his years of producing music whether it was through his shocking lyrics, his personality, or his creative eye. Hopefully, for the sake of his growing fanbase he will continue to do so.