It is no exaggeration to say that sea shorts have changed Nathan Evans’ life. The 26-year-old postman from Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, has become a phenomenon online thanks to the driving force, rhythmic a capella music.
The sea shanty genre has unexpectedly broken into the mainstream and has become something of a global online obsession in recent weeks, mostly driven by the duet feature on the video-sharing social media app TikTok.
The result is hundreds of versions of popular sea chants with satisfyingly low harmonized voices, sung by people who have never met – and a boost for a genre that was earlier than a niche, even a novelty, a branch of folk music was.
Google searches for the term ‘sea shanties’ is a highlight in the US, and the Reddit sea shanties community is currently the ninth fastest growing on the site and has doubled in the past week.
For Evans, who has been performing music for years and posting songs after his early-morning episodes, it started with a cover of an Irish folk song Leave Her, Johnny, which he recorded last summer with a handful of followers on his TikTok account shared.
“I haven’t listened to a lot of sea shanties yet, and when the video started, I realized that people really like that kind of music, and I find that I enjoy doing it,” he said. Six months and millions of likes later, he has more than 400,000 TikTok fans.
He has also appeared on radio, television and in articles around the world and has even been complimented by American singer-songwriter John Legend.
“It all went so fast and it was all overwhelming,” he said.
Evans, who writes his own music, never thought his first EP would be sea shawls, but he’s thankful nonetheless.
“They changed my life,” he said. “They opened so many doors and opportunities that I would never have had if it were not for them.”
The biggest instigator and beneficiary of this trend is probably that the Bristol Orchestra The Longest Johns, formed in 2013, are veterans of the sea-top contest.
Jonathan “JD” Darley, Andy Yates, Robbie Sattin and Dave Robinson have spent the best part of the past decade performing sea chants at festivals in the UK and have attracted a moderate fanbase.
But by the end of 2020, after the Longest Johns allowed Twitch streamers to use their music for free on the backdrop of their streams, one song in particular exploded.
The Wellerman, a sea track originally from New Zealand, is currently number 5 in the world and no. 2 in the US on Spotify’s viral chart, a list that listens and considers stocks. Even more impressive: The Longest Johns version of The Wellerman entered Spotify’s top 200 most streamed songs across the US on Wednesday.
This success came in waves, they said, with an increase in popularity in the summer, then October, then again in December. “And it happened now and each one got bigger and bigger than the previous one because more people started recognizing the song and connecting them,” Darley said.
“It’s just like this crazy spiral of growth that’s seen.”
Promise Uzowulu, a 23-year-old nursing student from Houston, Texas who follows the TikTok handle @strong_promises, is partly responsible for this recent wave.
His 43-second video, along with the Longest Johns’ version of The Wellerman in the car with his 21-year-old brother Frank, shows the sincere emotional trajectory known to new fans of the seashore, and has already had millions of views .
Uzowulu said: ‘He wore it and I was initially skeptical because he plays strange music. But to my surprise, I like the song a lot. I asked him to play it repeatedly until I learned the chorus.
“The video shows the honest progression of skepticism to full enjoyment.”
The Longest Johns acknowledges the genre’s simplicity and accessibility to this. Sattin said: ‘I would compare it to football songs. It does not matter if you are fit. ”
The Wellerman himself may also have a unique appeal during the pandemic, as the song is about waiting for a ship to bring supplies while they are on a seemingly endless whaling expedition. (Soon the Wellerman may come / To bring us sugar and tea and rum / One day when the tongue garden is finished / we say goodbye and go.)
“These are people who are in a bad situation and hoping for better. “Something like that seems to resonate with people,” Robinson said.
Yates added: “Or do they just need a delivery.”