In case you’ve visited social media currently—and certainly you haven’t as a result of we’re all retaining good on our New Yr’s resolutions—you’ve most likely encountered a sea shanty.

For these of you who don’t know what I’m speaking about, a fast recap. The ocean shanty arose halfway by the final millennium as a breed of work-song for sailors to whereas away the time, forge communal bonds, and customarily hold from going insane. Then a pair months in the past, a 26-year-old Scottish postman named Nathan Evans sang a rendition on TikTok that made the world turn out to be re-obsessed.

The ocean shanty kind is especially suited to TikTok. The youth-craze app lets individuals create “duets,” a function that adjoins a video put up to 1 already taking part in. In Sept., TikTok revamped the feature, resulting in a renaissance of collaborative creativity. Quickly after, Evans posted his efficiency of “Soon May the Wellerman Come,” which promptly went viral and set off a flood of duets, remixes, and copies.

For anybody questioning, “the Wellerman” refers to an worker of The Weller Brothers, an Aussie service provider outfit that dominated New Zealand ports within the 1830s. The singers of the shanty are pining for a resupply of staples for his or her voyage; specifically, sugar, tea, and rum. You possibly can contemplate the tune to be, in spirit, a maritime predecessor to “The Wells Fargo Wagon” within the 1957 musical The Music Man. (Aspect observe: Think about being that excited to see somebody from Wells Fargo today?)

The ocean shanty’s resurgence could appear random, but it surely is smart. Along with being completely suited to TikTok’s duet know-how, the style suits the second. Through the lockdowns and quarantines of the pandemic, persons are starved for human connection. What higher approach to discover solidarity than to lend one’s voice to the hauntingly lovely concord of nautical people a cappella?

(There’s one thing to be mentioned, too, for the shared human expertise of partaking in social media drudgery within the hopes of touchdown a giant, viral rating, echoing the grim lottery of 19th century whaling ventures.)

Individuals who study to take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of mass communications and faucet the zeitgeist acquire particular powers. (See, previously: @realDonaldTrump.) Proper now, it simply so occurs that cellular video-sharing software program from ByteDance, a Chinese language company, is without doubt one of the most vital world proving grounds for that miracle of a suggestions loop we name tradition.

Lest you suppose the ocean shanty’s newfound reputation is a fluke, I’d level you to the zany genius of Brian Wilson of The Seaside Boys, one of many all-time musical greats. Within the ‘60s, Wilson perfected the “wall of sound” approach famously related to the late hitmaker and convicted assassin Phil Spector, who died in jail this weekend. That groundbreaking fashion discovered avid followers by its characteristically fulsome reverberation, a high quality that performed effectively on radios and jukeboxes, the then-dominant audio-broadcasting know-how.

After you’ve completed with the Wellerman, give “Sloop John B,” The Seaside Boys’ own sea shanty adaptation, a pay attention. True genius is timeless.

Robert Hackett

Twitter: @rhhackett

robert.hackett@fortune.com