Nathan Evans: Sailor’s Song on TikTok Goes Viral

Airdale –

Once upon a time … a Scottish postman who loves to sing shanties. After distributing all the letters in little Airdale, he uploaded a shanty song to TikTok in December. “The Wellerman” went viral in Corona times. Meanwhile around 170 million times liked on TikTok, 15 million times viewed on Spotify, in many single charts at number 1.

• Nathan Evans is world famous thanks to TikTok
• Why sailors’ songs give us so much comfort in the Corona crisis
• The joint song with “Santiano” will be released on Friday, February 19, 2021

Nathan Evans (26) is no longer a postman, has a fat record deal. And now the most famous German seaman’s band has brought him on board.

Sea shanty goes viral on TikTok

Not a sailor’s thread, but a music fairy tale that goes to the heart: A young guy manages to get even teenagers excited about shanties with a covered, 200-year-old sailor’s song from New Zealand. When they heard shanties, most of them thought of growling bears in sailor shirts entertaining senior wreaths in the harbor. Maybe still to “What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor”, once drunkenly shouted along on school trips.

But Nathan, the skinny postman who sits in his room in the original TikTok version, sets the pace with a stick in his hand and throws this catchy tune, hit a nerve. The song is about the hard work of the whalers, but there are many parallels to the pandemic: While the whalers are trapped on their ship, “landlubbers” are stuck in their four walls today – waiting for better times. And if the seafarers brave the hard breeze, the corona storm won’t hold us down either. Basta!

Good for a smile in gloomy times

“The song just makes everyone smile,” says Evans. Now that everyone is at home, it has worked perfectly, everyone can sing along. And that in the truest sense of the word, because modern technology makes it possible: dozens have now switched to the original Evans video on TikTok – musicians, singers or even Kermit the frog, umpteen versions haunt the net.

Under #Seashanty, other sailor songs are experiencing an amazing revival again.
It goes without saying that the most famous German fur seals now also want to surf the Wellerman wave.

Nathan Evans and “Santiano” release song

“Santiano” got the Scots on board and released their super hit on Friday together with Evans. “He made the shanty a cool hit again via the social media platform TikTok,” writes the band on Facebook.

She had to postpone her 2020 tour twice because of Corona and finally wants to start in autumn. Will Evans be there on September 29th in Cologne’s Lanxess Arena? One can be curious …

Seaman’s songs also here in Cologne

“A great song”, thinks Reinhold Koytek, choir director and soloist at “1. Cologne Shanty Choir, Marinekameradschaft Cologne from 1891 ”. Yes, the Rhineland can also do shanty. The choir with 20 singers and four high-class musicians had performed around 1000 before the lockdown, including many concerts on American tourist ships anchored in Cologne. Tip for new fans of the genre: Just listen to it at www.1koelner-shantychor.de.

By the way, the real sailors would much rather sing a different song. Hundreds of thousands are stuck in ports around the world. 50 sailors from Kiribati alone, who are not allowed to travel to their home country due to Corona, have been waiting in a Hamburg youth hostel for weeks. When does it say: “Up, sailors, the anchors lifted, the sails up, the compass adjusted?”

The origin of the shanty

In the past, seafarers had a real back-breaking job and had to pull together without machines. They responded to the shantyman’s commands, shouted out loud against wind and weather, with their singing, which usually ended with a “haul” and a pull on the rope. Quite unmelodic, but motivating during the tug of war and scrubbing the deck. In the later “Sea Songs”, however, homesickness and wanderlust were the big themes.

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