Deep diving on a 200-year-old Sea Shanty

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Y what's up internet? I'm Jonathan Young and sea shanties are so back. It's 2026.

[00:00:09]How did we get here? If you're a millennial who likes pirates and stuff, you probably fell in love with Sea Shanties due to a little game called Assassin's Creed Black Flag. For a very long time, this game was the gold standard of what a pirate video game is supposed to feel like. Black Flag made the genius decision of hiring a folk singer to record sea shanties for the soundtrack of Black Flag. And that man's name was Shawn Dagger. I cannot explain to you how perfect the vibe was. Let me take you back. It's 2013. Big openw world games with massive maps were still fresh. We did not have any good pirate games. I was getting my pirate fix. This is I'm going to have my editor probably cut this out. I was getting my pirate fix from a game called Patrician 3. This is an isometric game from 2002. This was the closest thing that I could find as a child to a good pirate vibe game before Assassin's Creed Black Flag came out.

[00:01:20]This is how desperate I was. I love isometric games, right? I'm I'm a little bit of an unk, okay? But this is the type of thing that we were dealing with.

[00:01:27]I don't know how many of you remember, but OG Assassin's Creed hit different.

[00:01:31]The trailer for one of the original Assassin's Creed games where he's like going through the crowd, he like jumps and then stabs the king, right? So sick.

[00:01:40]And Assassin's Creed Black Flag comes out. But what took this game to the next goddamn level? They took the real songs that these sailors would sing hundreds of years ago on these boats and they hired this guy Shawn Dagger to get a bunch of dudes together and sing these songs so that when you would steer your ship around, the boys are singing.

[00:02:05]The boys are singing and they're having a good time. That's in our DNA, you guys. Being in a boat and singing songs has been a part of human history longer than Jesus Christ. It felt magical and it has stuck with me ever since. I have been honing my skills in the absence of any boys to sing with. My most played song on Spotify, you guessed it, a sea shanty with 14 million plays. And where did this seash shanty blow up for the first time with my generation? That's right, in mother freaking Assassin's Creed Black Flag. The only reason why anybody in my age demographic in this country knows about the song Santiana is because of Assassin's Creed Black Flag.

[00:02:50]So I am only standing here today with a successful career singing sea shanties because of this video game.

[00:02:58]Black Flag is about to be re-released.

[00:03:02]And in the same year of our Lord 2026, we got a new early access game called Windrose. It's like that scene in Ratatouille when the food critic takes a bite of the food and it like sucks him back in time through the power of nostalgia. And let me tell you something about Windrose.

[00:03:22]Somebody who is on the dev team of Windrose is like me and they were singing songs with the boys on the boat in Assassin's Creed Black Flag. And here's how I know that that's a fact.

[00:03:33]Assassin's Creed Black Flag hired Shawn Dagger to sing Sea Shanties. And what did Windrose do? Who did they hire to record the sea shanties that play while you're driving your ship in Windows? They hired Shawn Friaking Dagger.

[00:03:51]They hired Shawn Friaking Dagger. I hope I'm pronouncing his name right. As if I could not be more blessed with the success of my sea shanty metal covers which are available on all major music platforms. By the way, there are sea shanties on Windows that I have not yet covered. And those seash shanties are blowing up. Let me show you. Let me show you.

[00:04:13]>> And it's blowing the frig up. It's just a zoomer dude with text that says, "How do I explain to her that I've had this on repeat at the gym?" And it's just Shawn Dagger singing a new sea shanty on Windows game. We're so back. You can take the boys off the boat. You can take the sailors out of the sea, but you can't take the songs out of my heart.

[00:04:33]What are we doing today? We are taking one of the new sea shanty recordings from the game Windows and we are making a heavy metal version of that sea shanty. I just want to pay some respects to the man Sean Bagger. We salute you, Sean. Hopefully we can get a couple more singers on this track once I'm finished with it. We're going to get this track as close to being done as we can today.

[00:05:01]Canties are so elegantly written songs because the melody outlines the chord.

[00:05:07]If you're not a music person, basically what that means is that you don't have to have instruments with you to sing a C shanty and understand the vibe of the song. Modern songs the melody will often be very very simple and repetitive to be as catchy and memorable as possible. But se shanties these guys had to sing these songs with no instruments. So the melody has to do a lot of heavy lifting. You have to be able to sing a sea shanty without any instruments and have it make sense. So that's why sea shanties are so timelessly written songs is because they're bulletproof. It's like a stew.

[00:05:43]Once you know how to boil water, you know how to make a stew. Step one, we're going to brainstorm our groove. We're going to figure out what the guitar is kind of going to be doing, and that will inform what our drums are going to be doing. Then, we're going to go and do drums. Okay?

[00:06:03]for all you do. I know you all in the morning.

[00:06:20]>> So that's our first verse and now we got to mix it up. We're going to use different guitar parts, different grooves on the drums to make it more interesting so that the viewer doesn't get bored of hearing the same chorus and the same chord progression over and over.

[00:06:32]into a boy got a tear. I was cruising up and down.

[00:06:39]She was on the line like Bunie, you better not be going pee. Hey, do not pee behind my desk, please. And thank you. Come on. Oh, did you get yourself stuck? Oh my god.

[00:06:54]Yeah. Come out this way. Come on. Come on. You want to say hi to chat? Yeah.

[00:06:58]>> Yeah.

[00:06:59]>> Doggy piss break.

[00:07:04]Oh, we could do a we could do a a drop chorus. We have to do a chorus where everything cuts out except the vocals and then it comes back in for for one last chorus.

[00:07:21]is done. We have a a a general idea of what the heavy metal guitars are going to sound like on this C shanty cover using the original song as a guide. And now I'm going to sit down at the drum set and bang out a groove. And then once we have drums, we have the skeleton of the song to record the song for real. I have never used my streaming setup for drums before. If it works, it's going to be super cool. If it doesn't work, you get to watch me record drums in 10 fps for a little bit.

[00:08:12]Okay, now you should be able to hear me.

[00:08:14]We have a successful drum stream setup for now with the worst FPS I've ever had.

[00:08:20]Okay, so the intro we're going to start super big.

[00:08:41]Nah, that's too much. That's too much.

[00:08:43]We just do a build up there, right?

[00:08:50]Yeah, that's probably better. We'll see.

[00:08:57]Okay, I think we got to keep it fast because the chorus feels the best when it's slow and we need to build up to that.

[00:09:28]Okay, we've just finished recording the drum track and now we're going to use the power of Now we're going to quantize the drums, which basically means we're using a computer to make my drum part sound like it was recorded in a way that wasn't very sloppy.

[00:10:05]Guys, I I got to admit something. I got to admit something, guys. I've been so locked in on trying to make a cool metal version of this song for you that it just occurred to me based on the lyrics that uh I think the person who wrote this song had his money stolen by a lady of the night.

[00:10:24]I like wasn't paying attention to the lyrics at all. Oh you thieving Maggie May, you robbed me of my pay when I slept with you last night ashore.

[00:10:38]Damn shoddy Maggie May. How can I not get demonetized on YouTube?

[00:10:44]>> Does it say she was a lady of the night or was he just hooking up with someone?

[00:10:48]>> Oh, that's a good question. Maybe she was not a lady of the night.

[00:10:50]>> Prostitute.

[00:10:51]>> Maybe she was just a a a greasy woman in Liverpool who uh just stole from him after they slept together. We can't assume that we have a reliable narrator here either. So, there's another option that he agreed to pay her or did not understand the expectations that he would pay her. She robbed many a whaler and many a drunken sailor. They sent Maggie May to jail. She was like hustling. I was paid off at the home after a voyage from Sierra Leone. So he had just gotten back from the from overseas. 210 a month had been my pay.

[00:11:22]Inflation's a [ __ ] >> What does that even [ __ ] mean?

[00:11:24]>> Well, I presume that in the 1600s that meant that he was hitting the town. She was dressed in a gown so fine like a frigot of the line. What this song is saying it's like rap music. It's like when they talk about the girl the girl being like a Bugatti or a Ferrari.

[00:11:40]>> Yeah.

[00:11:40]>> It he's literally saying she was dressed in a gown looking like a like a fly looking ship. Nothing changes you guys.

[00:11:47]That's that's actually crazy to think about that. Looking at the cultural throughine of comparing women to beautiful modes of transportation.

[00:11:58]She was dressed in a gown so fine like a frigot of the line. And I being a sailor man gave chase. He's like, "Yo, you know, I had to do it."

[00:12:08]>> Next morning when I woke, I found that I was broke. I hadn't got a penny to my name. So, I had to pop me suit me John L's and me boots down in the Park Lane pawn shop number nine. So, he had to sell his clothes.

[00:12:26]>> What's a John L?

[00:12:28]>> Your your long john's.

[00:12:30]>> Oh, it's probably Long John's. Guilty.

[00:12:32]The jury found her for robbing a homeward bounder and she'll never roll down Park Lane no more. So he he took her to court. Poor one went out for my girl. She hustled too close to the sun.

[00:12:43]The lads, they cheered as she sailed down the bay.

[00:12:46]>> Dude, she she must have really had a bad reputation. We can find out how much money this guy was making adjusted for inflation. This is dope, you guys.

[00:12:55]Maggie May folk song. And they've got the the home where he would have gotten his two pounds. Oh, John L. Sullivan boot. It's a boot brand. He had to sell his Jordans. 210 a month. Inflation calculator. So £410 is the modern equivalent. With 2 lb sterling in 1750, you could purchase a massive amount of hard tac likely between 300 and 400 lb or enough to feed a single person for over a year. So you could buy people kibble and rent was probably way cheaper. Oh, that's the question. That's the question. Rent in England.

[00:13:36]>> Sailor, he's barely home. You know what I mean? He's living on a ship.

[00:13:40]>> Oh, he doesn't have to pay rent on a ship. So he doesn't have any rent. All of his expenses are paid for. The two pound 10 a month is just fun money for him because he would not have needed to buy his own food. They would have fed the sailors, right? Because you're like selling your life. He gets home, he gets paid probably multiple years worth of money. In the 1700s, going to the new world was more comparable to going to the moon. Us, we can be in England in 15 hours. You got on a ship and you were in that ship for months. Many of you would die. Many of you would get scurvy. It was miserable. Everything is different.

[00:14:21]Everybody is different. The rules are not the same. Our modern brains cannot comprehend how different this was for these guys. But the other thing you have to keep in mind is that he's probably been out there for like a year or more.

[00:14:34]He doesn't know who this girl is. He doesn't know that she has a reputation.

[00:14:37]So all the other guys at the bar are probably like, "Oh man, she's getting another one." And he's just gone through the worst time in his life, watched all his friends on the boat [ __ ] die of scurvy. And now this woman comes up to him in his first day back and is acting a little saucy. I'm not going to blame anybody in this story. Okay, Maggie's getting her bag. He's He's a little vulnerable. He's just come back from this horribly traumatizing trip. Based on the numbers that we're getting here, if it was a year worth of pay and it if somebody said it converted to about $700 US per month with no rent, at least tens of thousands of dollars, that in modern money, the cost of a house in colonial America was between 50 to,000 US. If you put that into modern buying power, this guy had multiple houses worth of money in his pocket. This guy went to the club with enough money to buy several houses in America. Pepperona says, "I hope he learned something from this." I mean, he wrote a song about it that is now being sung 300 years later. Okay, I got to get back to work on this.

[00:15:48]This is my initial brainstorming and I keep it in case I need to reference my initial brainstorming. And then now I'm actually recording the real layers that we're going to use in the in the track.

[00:16:13]This part's so fun.

[00:16:24]ball knowledge. We nudge the guitar part a few milliseconds to the right because that's what sounds better. Don't ask me to explain it. Just trust. We're taking a slight detour from guitar parts to do some bass because I've decided that I want to be able to hear the bass while I record guitars.

[00:16:59]ball knowledge. There is actually something I can improve here.

[00:17:05]I could do that which would be sick nasty. And we're just splicing that in here.

[00:17:14]The word more is the shot and the guitar hit is the chaser. If it was musical theater, that's what we would do.

[00:17:32]>> Oh, that that [ __ ] pinch harmonic turned out way better than I thought it was going to. Okay, so this is this is how we make this sound like actual metal core. We chop we chop chop chop. Anytime that there's a space, choppity chop, super easy. This is why guitarists sound better these days than they used to.

[00:17:47]They didn't do this stuff back then.

[00:17:49]They couldn't chopy chop. But now with choppity chop, super. Look at how fast that is. You, if you wanted to do this 30 years ago, you'd have to cut up a tape, like an actual tape, like like film tape, and then tape it back together.

[00:18:05]Oh, listen how much better that sounds, you guys. When you just have total silence from the guitars when it's not playing something.

[00:18:20]>> The rhythm guitars and bass are done. We have reached almost the point where it is time for me to send this C shanty off to a bunch of other singers and see if they'd like to do some guest vocals on this. We'll uh see if Caleb and Colum and Anna and a couple other people maybe want to sing on this. We'll find out.

[00:18:36]>> One week later.

[00:18:38]>> Welcome back. A week has passed since I started working on this song on stream, and I have been waiting for my guest vocalist to get back to me with their parts, and now they have. On this song, we're going to have Anna Pansu as a guest, incredible singer and cover artist on YouTube, and of course, Rashad B, one of the best guitar players on the internet and also a better singer than you would expect. So, I'm going to react to their guest vocal parts for the first time, and then I'm going to record my singing parts to top it all off. I'm going to add some tasteful orchestral parts with my keyboard here to finish off the song, and then it's all done.

[00:19:14]And you'll be seeing this on YouTube right now. I mean, you're watching this on YouTube right now. And I just I shouldn't have said that.

[00:19:22]I always think this this is going to be a stupid tangent that this like probably does not belong in the VOD, but if there is a God above, I hope that we get to see stats when we die.

[00:19:35]I'm not a religious person, but but if I were to be religious, the way to sell me on a religion is like, hey, when you die, you're going to get to look up stats, and what I want to know is how many men got scammed by Maggie May before they wrote this song about her. I have Anna Pansu's guest vocals right here. I have not listened to these at all. I love working with Anna Pansu because not only is she one of the best singers on the internet, but also she knows how to prepare her own vocals so that when she sends it to me, I don't have to do any work at all. She's already made the cupcake and now I just have to put it in the window. Here's Anna's vocal take for the Maggie Maggie May.

[00:20:21]When I stared into her while I had cruising up and down you so many wars and many drunken you never qual drag and drop that in and get our levels right and then that's already done. And now I don't have to spend another hour singing that verse worse than Anna would have. Friendship is magical, you guys.

[00:20:48]you son of a.

[00:20:51]>> And now we're going to put Rich's vocals in here. Rich is such an incredible guitar player and he never sings on his channel. We have a couple options to choose from for different takes. And we're going to start one at a time. Take one here.

[00:21:10]>> This is amazing.

[00:21:14]>> This is amazing. I mean, I I This is also perfect. This is also perfect.

[00:21:40]rich.

[00:21:40]>> Yeah.

[00:21:41]>> Oh, >> yeah.

[00:21:43]>> Yeah. What a what a what a killer.

[00:21:45]>> You must be rich shredding.

[00:21:46]>> What a killer guitar solo to jump scare me with.

[00:21:48]>> Oh my god. That's I was like, "Oh, blessing."

[00:21:51]>> My love, that is very astute of you to realize that I can't play guitar like that.

[00:21:56]>> Exactly.

[00:21:57]Regrettably, it is time for me to sing.

[00:22:00]We honor the memory of Maggie May. I hope that she escaped whatever island they shipped her off to and lived a very promiscuous life.

[00:22:10]And that's how Australia started. You are so right. That's literally how Australia started. England shipped off all the people like Maggie May and then all the criminals in Australia said, "We'll just start our own country." Oh, Van Demon. Where's Van Demon? Oh my god, guys.

[00:22:29]>> What?

[00:22:29]>> It's Australia.

[00:22:32]>> They shipped her to Australia.

[00:22:33]>> They shipped her to Australia. And that's lit. Like, oh my god. Every time that we work on this song, we get deeper into the Maggie May seash shanty lore to slave upon Van Demon's cruel shore. Van Demon's Land is the colonial name for Tasmania, Australia. So this is the canonical story of the first Australian girl boss.

[00:22:59]Maggie Maggie is how a normal person would sing it.

[00:23:04]I'm Oh, but you'll never demon's cru.

[00:23:18]Oh, you've lost so many whales and many drunken sailors, but you'll never cruise around Liverpool. I got to take this one step at a time. Many drunken sailors, but you'll never cruise around Liverpool no more.

[00:23:32]I was paid OFF AT THE HOME FOR A VOICE FROM SLY old month had been my as I tingled in I was sadly taken by a lady by the name of me.

[00:23:48]I was a little bit too resentful of a TAKE by a lady by the name of me.

[00:23:56]Okay, the next step is we have to record gang vocals. We have to make it sound like there's a whole group of drunk dudes in a bar singing this. And in order to do that, I'm going to sing badly on purpose over and over and over again. And trust me, even though it sounds really stupid right now, there's an exact science to this and it's going to sound so dope by the time that we're done. Lock in.

[00:24:22]Liverpool.

[00:24:26]Some of you may ask, "John, why are you cupping your hands like that?" Because it sounds better. It sounds like I'm in the back of a bar doing this. It just sounds better. Okay, I've made 20 layers of drunk pirate singing many times. Just trust the process. Okay, now we're going to do a really bad layer.

[00:24:48]Seriously. SERY taking you away. to demon.

[00:24:59]>> Music without harmonies is for cowards.

[00:25:02]Cowards and lazy people. Oh, you robbed them and many drunk, but you'll never >> flawless. Flawless. I'm locked in.

[00:25:26]>> Liverpool no more. Listen to how big that sounds, you guys. Listen to how big that sounds and all you have to do is sing badly. Okay, that's the key. You want to make music that sounds like barcore, sing like [ __ ] I'm never let go.

[00:25:55]>> Yeah, that's fine. Whatever.

[00:25:57]>> Is there a a pirate equivalent of that?

[00:26:06]No more cruise no more.

[00:26:19]Cruise Liverpool no more.

[00:26:23]That's so good. We are done with vocals.

[00:26:27]I am bringing back the golden age of sea shanties with sheer force of will and I do not care who is with me. Look at that freaking dog. Look at that freaking dog.

[00:26:38]>> A few moments later, >> the song is done. We finished all of the last layers to tie everything together.

[00:26:46]We finished our vocals. We finished our drunk pirate gang vocal layers. And of course, we've put in our incredible guest guitar solo and guest vocals from Richie B and Anna Pansu. And now we're going to listen to the whole song together. Please drop a like, drop a comment, head on over to twitch.tv/jonathan ymusic. If you want to be here next time I work on a song live on the Twitch stream, drop me a subscribe, drop me a follow. I love you all. Thank you for watching this VOD. We're going to listen to this song as a finished product for the first time together. and I'll see you on the next one. Oh, many many you cruise from no more.

[00:27:47]Heat. Heat.

[00:28:04]Heat. Heat.

[00:28:16]Oh, you can't see me.

[00:28:43]Heat. Heat. Heat.

[00:28:53]Heat. Heat.

[00:29:04]Oh, you future.

[00:29:37]Everyone taking you away.

[00:29:52]Heat. Heat.

[00:30:17]Maggie Maggie me taking you away to sleep upon the demon's cruel shore.

[00:30:24]Oh, you will Heat. Heat.

[00:30:39]Oh, YOU Cruise on no more.

[00:30:48]I should never cruise on no more.