Sea Shanty TikTok Fame Nathan Evans Signs Deal With Polydor Records After Viral Success
After Nathan Evans’ videos put him into a viral success, the Sea Shanty Tiktok star signed a deal with Polydor Records.
After uploading a video of the traditional sea shanty ‘The Wellerman’ on the app, the Scottish postman, 26, became an online sensation earlier this month.
“On Thursday (January 21), announcing the deal with Polydor, he said: “See how I was on Friday as a postman? I have just signed with the world’s largest record label.
“I have just entered into an arrangement with Polydor Records. I did that. It’s over and I’m launching a single one.
Evans’ debut single is a sea shanty EDM remix-with house beats added by 220 KID & Billen Ted manufacturers.
In July 2020, his first upload came with a typical ditty that went on to score 1.1 million views from users of TikTok around the world.
A source of cooperation between other TikTokers has also been the Sea Shanty craze.
He previously told BBC Radio 4’s Today show, “It’s crazy and has gone much further than I ever thought it would go.”
Back in July 2020, I did a sea shanty only because someone asked in a comment under one of my videos.
So I uploaded it, and it got 1.1 m views. I figured the demand must have been there.
“People were looking forward to more and after that they commented underneath every video saying that you can sing this one, you can sing that one, it was just people’s requests for me to sing them.”
Originally, the songs were sung by merchant seamen as they carried out everyday duties on ships.
@nathanevanss The Wellerman. ##seashanty ##sea ##shanty ##viral ##singing ##acoustic ##pirate ##new ##original ##fyp ##foryou ##foryoupage ##singer ##scottishsinger ##scottish
♬ original sound – N A T H A N E V A N S S
Nathan said, “When they were originally sung, they were designed to keep everyone in time with the work they did.”
So I think it’s the fact that you can get everybody involved, and everybody can get involved, that you don’t really need to be able to sing, that the lyrics are plain, and that’s just the beat and the voices. It’s a bit of all, I suppose, that appeals to everything.
Nathan‘s successes have led to ‘sea shanties’ experiencing their largest-ever success in the history of the search engine, according to Google Trends.