For some reason, a corner of the internet has become obsessed with sea shanties, making for an unusually wholesome set of memes, a participatory music culture in action.
https://twitter.com/Beertheist/status/1348759849077714951
The tune in this delightful video is called “The Wellerman,” as sung by The Longest Johns.
Here are the lyrics with some context. A wellerman is a supply ship from the Weller Brothers, an Australian whaling company. A “billy of tea” is a makeshift teapot, a tin can with a handle that you hang over a fire. “Tonguing” means cutting up a whale carcass, presumably because the tongue is the yummiest part.
Here’s my transcription of the Longest Johns’ version.
I told my kids that this is a pirate song, and they love pirates. So the tune has been in heavy rotation in my house. Why is it so satisfying? Some of it is the Longest Johns’ lusty commitment, and some of it is just that boats are cool. But there are technical music forces at work here as well. The whole tune is in the C natural minor scale.
In the verses, Cm is the obvious tonic chord because of its placement and repeated emphasis. The melody runs up and down a single octave of C natural minor. In the second bar, the tune lifts up to Fm before returning home. In the fourth bar, it takes a short trip through Fm and Bb before landing back on Cm again.
The chorus is slightly more complicated. The melody begins with C, but the underlying chord is not Cm anymore. Instead, it’s Ab. We could technically still be in the key of C minor at this point, but the next chord is Eb, which feels like the sun breaking through the clouds, more like a switch to E-flat major.
E-flat major and C natural minor are the same seven pitches, but rotated around to have different starting points. If you alternate between Cm and Eb chords, the only way to tell which one is the key center is through emphasis and placement.
The Fm in the second bar of the chorus has an ambiguous function. It could be the ii chord in E-flat major, or the iv chord in C minor. Regardless, we end on Cm, so that establishes that this brief flash of cheery E-flat major was just temporary. The chorus repeats the Ab-Eb gesture, then ends on the same Fm-Bb-Cm progression as the verse. Note that this tune contains no cadences. There’s no G7 chord setting up Cm, and there’s no Bb7 setting up Eb. In classical music terms, the tune isn’t really in C minor, it’s modal C Aeolian. That’s why it sounds like a folk song and not a classical piece.
Harmony is not the only thing that makes this sound like a folk song. The Longest Johns’ untrained singing style contributes to the folkiness too. Their backing vocals use some “bad” counterpoint and voice leading. For example, at the end of the chorus, on “take our leave and gooo,” the four singers all converge on C in octaves rather than spreading themselves out across C, E-flat and G. If I wrote counterpoint like this in graduate tonal theory, I would have flunked. But this tune would not be improved by “correct” voice leading. Classical-style choral arrangements of folk songs like this can sound smoother and prettier, but without the rough edges, the music loses its soul.
BTW, to confirm my hypothesis that everything sounds good over the Funky Drummer break:
Update: response post from Wenatchee the Hatchet
Further update: Adam Neely’s take
The last year or so has been great for modal pop songs. Harry Styles songs have used things I could fairly characterize as Dorian, Lydian, Mixolydian and Aeolean. He may be avoiding Phrygian because the Phrygian thing he did earlier with One Direction was not a hit. I don’t think the rhythms would allow an easy mashup between the Wellerman and Adore You, but I think you’ll find it’s the same 7 pitch classes.