ON THE RISE
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ESSEX, England — The 1960s music of Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and Woodstock left a deep impression on English singer and songwriter Kayleigh Walker, and those influences pushed her to produce her debut single and video, “Psychedelic.”
Released in August 2023, “Psychedelic” is steeped in the color and vibe of an era when music was changing and the world was changing from more black and white to a wild array of colors and emotions.
“I love the 60s, I love that whole psychedelic era and how everyone got pulled together and I wanted to write a song that represented how that music makes you feel without the influence of LSD and other substances,” Walker said. “I wanted it to be about how music makes people get up and makes you feel good. When I was writing it I was reflecting on how I was growing as a person in the music world and how I felt like a little bit of an outsider.”
Walker said she wasn’t alive in the 1960s, but documentaries and videos of that chaotic time inspired her soul and creativity.
“I watch a lot of documentaries on Woodstock and I liked the whole 60s vibe with the live instruments,” Walker said. “I wanted to do something that was kind of relevant to everyday music that we have now in this generation but I wanted to reflect on when music was at its highest where people were being themselves. When I was writing I also had that vision from day one that it needed to be that 60s psychedelic meditation of a higher self and that's what I wanted to create. I had a vision of while I was writing the song of what I wanted the video to be like.”
Walker lives in Essex, a county northeast of London, and started her music career in a cover band before branching out on her own. She has talent, style and showmanship she puts it all on display with a 1960s kaleidoscopic video to go with “Psychedelic.”
“When I was younger I always wanted to be in front of the camera or I wanted to be a singer,” Walker said. “Growing up I was doing a lot of musical theatre performances, local ones. I knew that singing other people’s songs never felt quite right for me. I always wanted to go off and improvise and do my own style on it. It wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I realized I kind of wanted to write my own songs but I wasn’t sure how to because I don’t play any instruments.
“In between that I was doing a little bit of modeling, thinking I might go down that route, but everything led me back to the music. It was definitely during the pandemic that I realized I could not put the pen down, I was just writing and writing and writing, getting melodies in my head and then taking them to the producer.”
Walker said the song is getting great traction and people are starting to notice her more and more. She’s working on more songs and an album to come out later this year and she’s looking forward to performing on stage.
“I’m a bit of a storyteller, so my songs are more story-based rather than love stories,” she said. “When I’m writing it’s like very poetic and I like to really live in a fantasy when I'm writing as well as reality. I’d really like for people to know I don’t follow music trends, I do what shows my heart’s purpose and my life’s purpose. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea but I enjoy what I do and that's what makes me me. I want more people to be like that, to think outside the box and don’t follow trends and be more unique.”
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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.
