The Longest Johns‘ “Wellerman” is one of many renditions of the sea shanty that has gone viral, racking up more than 21 million streams on Spotify alone. The British folk group originally released the song in 2018, but it found new life on TikTok when sea shanties from the 1800s unexpectedly became a craze on the app. For the uninitiated, sea shanties are a type of folk song that were often sung by fishermen while doing back-breaking work aboard their ships.

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