ON THE RISE
At only 11 years old, Sasha Friedman has experienced more in her life than most people do in a lifetime. The Atlanta based singer/songwriter has been battling cancer since the age of 10 and now she is using her music to inspire others to have hope and always push forward to succeed at what they love.
Friedman has been a performer in every sense of the word for as long as she can remember. She was inspired by the band Queen at a young age and had a love for acting and performing on stage. She has also learned how to play just about every instrument under the sun, with her favorite being the piano and ukulele. When she was nine years old Friedman was discovered by Cory and Julia Shuman of Bird Big Sound through social media. Most recently she released her first single titled “Free to Be Me,” which hit number seven on the iTunes Pop Charts in the within the first day of its release in June. It can currently be found on Spotify.
The lyrics to the song are uplifting and inspiring, and is backed by a catchy beat and rhythm that coincides with her zest for life. She sings, “Life shouldn’t be so hard, it’s time we had some fun,” and “nobody’s gonna stop me from being myself.” While the song was written before she was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma, she said the vibe of the tune directly relates to her journey through battling the bone cancer that had spread to her neck, arms, legs and lungs.
“I wrote it before my cancer journey and I wrote it about a kid that was nervous about fitting in, but realized it was okay to be myself and be me,” Friedman explained. “That’s where ‘Free to be Me’ came from because you should be free to be you.”
Shortly after recording the song she was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma after she experienced neck pains, and promptly started her treatment. This involved chemotherapy and a major surgery where she had three ribs removed. While the struggles of bone cancer are daunting, Friedman has remained positive throughout the journey and has a positive outlook on life and what the future holds for her. She is currently in remission and has used the battle with cancer as inspiration to continue writing uplifting, positive music that is beyond her years.
“Seeing what people have to go through and knowing how difficult things can get, I want music to help people know that they can get through it and get through difficult times in their lives,” said Friedman. “I want to make people feel that they are not alone and that you are never alone in anything, and that there are other people going through something like that. I want my songs to bring people together and make people happy.”
Friedman said that recently she surprised her best friend Emma at a school dance, as they thought she would need to miss it because of chemotherapy treatment. “Free to Be Me” was played at the dance before the single was released and she said it was an instant hit among her friends. Friedman said it was taxing for her to be there due to the cancer treatment, and she even got a little sick, but she said she wouldn’t have changed a thing because she had the time of her life.
“Everyone was dancing at the school dance and it was so fun to listen,” Friedman said, adding that people who she had never even met were coming up to her raving about the track.
She said Emma has been so excited about how successful her music has already been, and Friedman added that she has big plans on the horizon. Next year she will be singing the National Anthem at the Boston Marathon to represent Dana Farber.
She also has new songs in the works, including one that that is about AI. Friedman said she is sure that song will be a hit, as it is a trending topic in the world right now. She said the song is about a robot who falls in love with a boy. When she told the boy she was a robot, he tried to shut her out and pull the plug. Instead she kept pushing and turned into a real girl, showing him that nobody was going to shut her down and she was someone to be loved.
Friedman said she does have aspirations of fame in her future, but in no way does she want to be someone who doesn’t have a care. She wants to be an artist who can help the world become a better place.
“I am so excited for the future because I really want to be heard,” Friedman said. “I want to spread happiness and get people through hard times. I want to bring friends, family and even just strangers together to feel happy.”
Make sure to stay connected to Sasha Friedman on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts @officialsashf.
ON THE RISE
As Belle & Sebastian share their buoyant 2026 Scotland World Cup anthem ‘It Only Takes One Lion’, frontman Stuart Murdoch has spoken to NME about capturing the feeling back home and his hopes for the team since childhood.
Released today (Tuesday June 2), the Scottish indie heroes’ bid for their nation’s tournament anthem was written after the team’s surprise 4-2 qualifying win against Denmark.
“I felt like we were watching history in the moment, like the hand of God from the old National Lottery adverts was pointing at us,” Murdoch told NME about that game-changing victory. “It was meant to be. Scotland aren’t a terrific team and Denmark are better, but it just felt that day that Scotland were destined to win. Three out of the four goals were things of beauty.”
Produced by and co-written with Pete Ferguson and premiered at the band’s recent London Royal Albert Hall show as part of the anniversary tour for their classic first two albums ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, the soaring song is intrinsically Belle & Sebastian as it morphs from a hymn to a an orchestral disco jam as Murdoch sings of a nation’s hopes and his own boyhood dreams.
NME spoke to Murdoch from the band’s North American tour, where we found him in a graveyard in Texas. “I was just looking for a park because Austin is a pretty scary place downtown now, so I’ve ended up in the Texas Cemetery,” he shared via Zoom.
Was there anyone famous buried there?
“I was looking around and I found the founder of Austin City Limits, which is pretty cool as that’s where we’re playing tonight. I’m looking at one now and it just says, ‘Martin: he loved the law’. Then underneath it says, ‘Billie Louise: she loved the lawyer’.”
We joke that there’s the opening to a Belle & Sebastian song if there ever there was one. “It’s great! It’s given me inspiration.”
For now, read the rest of interview with Murdoch below as he tells us about Scotland’s chances, 30 years of hurt, if fans will be singing it at the top of their lungs in Canada, the US and Mexico this summer, and what’s next for the band.
NME: Hello Stuart. Here we are with ‘It Only Takes One Lion’ Who needs three?
Stuart Murdoch: “Who needs three? Good question. I wouldn’t know!”
What’s the mood been like in Scotland since you qualified?
“It’s funny. I’ve noticed this everywhere: with the World Cup there’s a mixture of cynicism and anticipation. When the actual tournament starts, everyone will get excited about it. Because of FIFA, the peace prize, the ticket prices, people seem quite down about it. I found that in Mexico. They were quite fed up with the general hype about it. I’m in the States just now and you shouldn’t believe all the hype: people are people. The States are just as ‘great’ as ever. We love coming here, we love the cities. The general sense of North American optimism will make for a good tournament.”
“With Scotland though, people will definitely be excited about it. You have to understand, it’s been 30 years since Scotland qualified so I think everybody and their dog has written a song for the team.”
How do you meet the challenge of penning a World Cup anthem, when there have been so many legendary bangers and absolutely shite duds?
“I never planned it. I woke up with a tune in my head and a feeling. That’s the way it should always be for songs. I couldn’t control myself and it was quite straight-forward. I wrote this initial bit about how I felt about the current World Cup team and the qualifying game. It was more introspective.
“When it starts off with, ‘The days are dark and long…’, it’s just my general feeling about football. I’ve been going to see my own team quite a lot recently. It’s my little anthem for how I feel about football and following Scotland for the last 50 years, just the ups and downs. It’s quite a heartfelt thing. When I was eight or nine, the Scottish team meant so much to me, it the thing I was most invested in. There’s a line in there about how I used to memorise the whole squad before ‘78 and 82.”
Tell us about lyric: “This is Scotland, where everyone knows you start with nothing… where you can join an army for peace”…
“My wife made the video for it and she said, ‘I’m not sure I like that line about everyone starting with nothing’. Our first game is against Haiti and they really have nothing. Their country is pretty poor and they’re going through hard times. It was almost a throwaway line and I’m not sure what I meant by it, but in a footballing sense every game starts with nothing. Even if it’s against Brazil, you’ve always got a chance!
“The army refers to The Tartan Army, which has really been quite a remarkable institution for the past 30 years. We changed from drunken buffoons that used to wreck things to this excellent supporting brigade.”
It’s not your standard football sing-along. Can you see it being sung in the terraces?
“I’m not sure, I didn’t cynically design it for that. Many people have said to me in the past, ‘None of your songs have a chorus, you need to write one’. ‘This is Scotland’ is a chorus! They things need to happen organically. I’m sure the fans will still be singing ‘Yes sir, I can boogie’ for years to come.”
What do you actually think of Scotland’s chances right now?
“With the last Euros, they maybe got stage fright or didn’t have that tournament experience. I think Andy Robertson [captain] will be telling them, ‘We really need to produce our best stuff’. If they do and we see them actually playing football, then I don’t really care about the results that much. I just want to see Scotland exceeding our expectations of them. That Denmark game was so crazy that everything after just feels like a bonus.”
If miracles do happen and Scotland make it to the final, how will you celebrate? A free gig in Glasgow?
“Of course, yes! Free everything. If we even got close, I think the whole country would shut down for a year and the GDP would drop. We’d go into a massive recession but no one would care.
“We were playing a gig in Mexico City and I told the crowd, ‘It’s you and us, Mexico and Scotland in the final’. Mexico have never really got close either. I told them it would be five goals a piece, even after everyone takes a penalty and we have to share the trophy. I would settle for that.”
You released two albums in quick succession with 2022’s ‘A Bit of Previous’, 2023’s ‘Late Developers’ and then your debut novel Nobody’s Empire in 2024. You’ve been busy! Is there any progress on new material?
“We went through a period where we recorded a lot and we said, ‘Let’s not record for a while and give ourselves a couple of cycles off’. We’re doing these 30th anniversary shows so we’re just going to lean on the back catalogue and cruise for a while. We’re doing a year on and a year off so everyone can focus on different things.
We’re not looking at new Belles stuff for a while. I’m meant to be developing Nobody’s Empire into a film, so that’s my next task. It’s a long way off from being made but I’m going to write the script for that.”
Scotland’s first World Cup tournament match is against Haiti on Sunday June 14, before they go on to play Morocco on Friday June 19 and Brazil on Wednesday June 24.
The band’s ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ anniversary tour continues throughout the summer, performing the iconic albums in full during across the UK, Europe, North America, Mexico, Australia, Singapore and Japan. Visit here for tickets and more information.
