Nathan Evans completes his journey from postman to viral sensation to chart-topping smash as his hit ’Wellerman' takes the Number 1 spot on this week’s UK Official Singles Chart. The remix of the sea shanty with 220 Kid and Billen Ted climbs to 1 this week, after Evans' first TV performance of the track on last week’s episode of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.
The film 'Fisherman's Friends', about the UK sea shanty group, is being turned into a musical, and it will open at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro in the autumn, BBC reports. The sea shanty band, together since 1995, went from singing in their local pub to playing the main stage at Glastonbury and having a top 10 UK album.
Olivia Rodrigo holds to the top of the UK Official Singles chart with 117,000 chart sales of her hit single 'Drivers Licence', some three times higher than her closest rival, Anne-Marie, KSI and Digital Farm Animals' 'Don’t Play'. The hit single clocks up 13.7 million streams, the biggest one-week figure for a Number 1 single in two years. the Official Charts reports. Also making waves is Longest Johns’ sea shanty 'Wellerman' which rides into the chart at No. 37 following enormous viral success on TikTok.
Sea shanties are antiphonal music - one where there is a call and an answer in the song - and as such perfectly fitted for TikTok, music theorist Adam Neely says in his latest video about the latest viral trend. Neely, with help from his mom, explains how it works.
Scottish postman Nathan Evans has signed a record label with Polydor and quit his day job, a mere month after storming TikTok with sea shanties. His rendition of 'The Wellerman' literary exploded in just a matter of weeks, and it had also made people interested in sea shanties as well. The 26-year-old said it goes to show that if you keep going anything can happen, BBC reports.
Scottish postman Nathan Evans has become a worldwide sensation after he posted a shanty song on his TikTok, which has started a new trend. In late December he shared 'Soon May the Wellerman Come', a sea shanty song about sailors on a whale-boat, which went on to become upgraded by other singers, and has reached up millions of views by now. Sea Shanty TikTok has exploded in the meantime, and Spotify also now has a “sea shanty season” playlist. BBC, Guardian, and many others report on the story.
In 2015 two musicians and lecturers, Johny Lamb (who records as Thirty Pounds of Bone) and Philip Reeder took a trip on a trawler called the Girl Mary. They brought instruments and recording gear along with them and recorded folk songs about the sea while on the boat. The sounds of the ocean and the gulls are heard throughout, as well as the creaking of the hull, a helicopter (apparently belonging to the coastguard), something that could be a mechanical winch. The result - 25 minutes of beautifully sad fishermen songs on 'Still Every Year They Went', straight from the sea.
