Nathan Evans

After kickstarting the sea shanty phenomenon that has swept the globe in december 2020, Nathan Evans releases his debut track “Wellerman” in January 2021.

The genre is everywhere right now and it’s all down to Nathan that a new generation are discovering the thrills of fisherman-themed, multi-harmonised folk music. It all began when Nathan, from Airdrie, North Lanarkshire in Scotland, decided to start uploading songs to TikTok after completing his morning duties as a postman. The first track he shared was a cover of Leave Her, Johnny, the traditional Irish shanty that dates back to the early part of the last century. But what happened next was off the scale, with the video racking up eye-popping numbers. Something about this music and Nathan’s charismatic delivery connected in a big, big way. 

 By the time Nathan uploaded a rendition of the New Zealand whaling ballad The Wellerman a few months later, he was at the centre of a new cultural movement whirling around sea shanties. He has over 500,000 TikTok followers and The Wellerman has amassed an astonishing seven million views and more. Now, taking his music career full time, he follows in the chart dominating footsteps of those he has always admired including Dermot Kennedy and Lewis Capaldi as well as finding unlikely fans in Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gary Barlow and Ronan Keating who have also uploaded their own renditions of the song alongside the current 1.6 billion videos using the hashtag #seashanty on TikTok.

 He has begun an international love of sea shanties that have seen the craze sweep the globe, popping up in a variety of platforms from football posts to prime-time TV shows. UK producer 220 Kid’s remix of Wellerman became a viral sensation of its own, exploding out of Instagram and receiving radio plays from Eirewave.