13 January 2020
Folk music is going viral on social media in lockdown with a craze for sea shanties dominating TikTok, the video-sharing social media platform beloved by Generation Z.
The #seashanty hashtag has been around since mid-2020 but started to gain momentum from late December, when TikTokker Nathan Evans posted a 60s clip of himself singing a harmonised cover of a 19th-century New Zealand whaling song.
Since Nathan’s Wellerman cover went viral, the 26-year-old from Airdrie in Lanarkshire has gained hundreds of thousands of new followers - many of whom requested he post more folk music covers. A subsequent shanty, Drunken Sailor, racked up nearly 2m views in just five days.