#WEATHERMAN SEA SHANTY FULL#
TikTok is full of unconventional subcultures, certainly more unconventional than any I’ve ever come across. What’s actually happening is the convergence of several forces that shove niche content in front of an enormous amount of eyeballs. Did any of these trends last beyond a few weeks? Of course not.
#WEATHERMAN SEA SHANTY MAC#
“The cranberry juice guy skateboarding to Fleetwood Mac is here to save us.” “This girl rollerskating to ‘Jenny From the Block’ is here to save us.” “The Ratatouille musical is coming to save us” was an actual headline from December. You can replace the headline “Sea shanties are here to save us” with literally any “heartwarming” trend that came out of TikTok last year.
There is no need to square sea shanty TikTok with our current political moment or pretend that there was something inevitable about the popularity of sea shanties in early January 2021. The thing about viral sea shanties is that there is literally nothing to explain at all. “Um, it makes total sense we’re all into sea shanties now,” claimed Vulture, the reason being “they are unifying, survivalist songs, designed to transform a huge group of people into one collective body, all working together to keep the ship afloat.” Few went as far to elevate a handful of TikToks to unearned significance than the Washington Post, whose (surely semi-ironic) headline was “ Sea shanties are here to save us.” The New York Times stepped in to correct us (actually, they are “whaling songs”) while the New Yorker did what the New Yorker does best: Spell words weirdly (what the hell is “sea-chantey?”). Of course, all of the websites were attempting to explain why a random New Zealand sea shanty called “Wellerman” was suddenly stuck in everyone’s head. It should have been easy to envision the breathless coverage that followed once the sea shanty videos had made the jump from TikTok to Twitter, where a far greater number of adult journalists consume news. I should have been able to imagine the tweet with literally hundreds of thousands of likes saying “SeaShantyTok keeps getting better” or declaring 2021 the “ year of the sea shanty” all because a video had gone viral on TikTok, which is hardly extraordinary on a platform where random videos are constantly going viral. It sounded nice in a kind of brain-tingly way, but my first thought was more like this is the dorkiest thing I’ve ever seen and so scrolled past.īut looking back, I should have known that this was precisely the sort of thing that the internet would descend upon and cling to with a ferocity greater than a swashbuckling sailor gripping an oar in a mid-Atlantic storm. Another man had added several lines of tenor and baritone to harmonize with the song. The video featured a man singing a song whose lyrics I could barely make out due to his thick Scottish accent but was definitely saying something about a ship and a shore. That was, until two weeks ago, when a real, live sea shanty came across my TikTok “For You” page. Ī couple of months ago, when Spotify was showing each of its users their most popular songs and artists of 2020, I saw a meme that was made to look like someone’s most listened-to genre was “1800s sea shanties.” I chuckled and re-posted it to my Instagram Story, thinking, “‘ Sea shanty,’ now that’s a term you don’t hear every day” and forgot about it. Is there something you want to see more of? Less of? Different of? Email, and subscribe to The Goods’ newsletter here.
#WEATHERMAN SEA SHANTY UPDATE#
Hello from The Goods’ twice-weekly newsletter! On Tuesdays, internet culture reporter Rebecca Jennings uses this space to update you all on what’s been going on in the world of TikTok.
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