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0:00Songs that were forgotten but randomly came back.
0:01Back in the 1800s,
0:03sailors working on whaling ships off the coast of New Zealand
0:05used to sing a song called Wellerman
0:07to pass the time at sea. It was never a mainstream hit,
0:10never on the charts,
0:11just a working song sung by man who spent months on the ocean.
0:13For over 150 years, it stayed outside the mainstream.
0:17At the end of 2020, a postman from Scotland changed everything.
0:20Nathan Evans filmed a simple video at home,
0:23just him singing Wellerman into his phone.
0:24No professional production,
0:25no plan, no idea what was about to happen.
0:28He posted it to TikTok, not expecting anything.
0:30Within days, it started going viral.
0:32Then something extraordinary happened.
0:33Strangers from across the world started dueting his video,
0:36adding harmonies, adding bass voices,
0:38adding instruments. Layer by layer,
0:39a 150 year old wailing song was being rebuilt in real time
0:43by thousands of people who had never met.
0:45It sparked a wave of sea shanty videos that swept across TikTok.
0:48Whole world was suddenly singing songs from over a century ago.
0:51Then the music industry came calling.
0:52Nathan Evans, the postman from Scotland,
0:54was signed to Polydor Records.
0:56The official version of Wellerman hit number one in the UK,
0:59hundreds of millions of streams worldwide.
1:00A man who spent his mornings delivering letters
1:02was now performing on TV.
1:04A 150 year old wailing song took one short video to come back to life.
