(2024)

This song serves as a response to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024, where 26-year-old Luigi Mangione shot and killed Thompson, whose company insures 49 million Americans and had $281 billion in revenue for the 2023 fiscal year.

Amidst national protests each year regarding healthcare-related businesspeople, CEOs of firms associated with healthcare, and the systematic injustice regarding the distribution of healthcare to millions of Americans, Welles acts upon releasing and writing a song to let his feelings known about the killing, particularly to encourage distrust within the current healthcare system and, predominantly, its CEO’s, owners, and other firms associated.

(2024)

The song’s message is direct and harsh, as highlighted by its title, “War Isn’t Murder.” However, it’s full of lyrical wordplay of the kind that someone who has been doing this a while usually comes up with. The whole idea of the song is to needle at the semantics that people use to discuss and paper over the nature of combat.
“War Isn’t Murder”: A Protest Song Built For Social Media