Assassin’s Creed Black Flag’s shanties are still the best part of the game

Remember, in 2021, when TikTok was suddenly awash with sea shanties? It remains one of the most inexplicable, albeit wholesome, online crazes of the pandemic era: a tide of videos of young men (mostly men) with beards and nice sweaters adding layers of harmonies to ancient seamen’s work songs. For a hot minute, these a capella folk songs about a sailor’s sorry lot were the coolest music on the planet — and all because a Scottish singer called Nathan Evans uploaded a video of himself singing “Wellerman,” a whaler’s shanty originating in New Zealand.