ON THE RISE
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With his new single “Big Girl,” a rocked-out father-daughter dialogue…John Beyer continues having fun in his new career as a singer, songwriter and producer.
“It’s about a father-daughter relationship, a story that’s been told before, but not in this drama pop, rock ballad way that we have going on here,” he said.
John, of course, sings as the dad in a baritone voice that can easily hit the tenor range:
Gave you everything on a platter
Visions that I had for you
They just shattered
Always wanted to be such a big girl
Mia Gentile rocks out as the daughter:
I needed my own identity
I look in the mirror
And it’s you I see
I had no choice to become a big girl
Both star in the compelling music video.
The song comes from a story he told Benjamin Hey!, his collaborator on the song and in John’s music company, John Beyer Music.
“This is when my daughter was 13, 14 years old, and she was being a teenager, you know, staying out late, and one day she said something very disrespectful.” Anybody with a teenage daughter — can fill in the blanks.
“And then she ran into her room and slammed the door. I said, ‘Open the door.’ And she wouldn’t.”
I broke through the door with nothing but my bare hands.
Almost two decades later, John told this story to Benjamin Hey!, an accomplished singer, songwriter and producer and John’s right hand collaborator in JBM.
“And that story inspired him to write this song based on the feelings that I felt back then. Feelings of anger, disappointment, frustration and disrespect from the father side. But it was also important for Ben to give the daughter in the story a voice as well. So, then we took Ben’s demo and constructed a stronger production.”
We reached out to our guy, Arthur Pingrey, who is a co-producer on the song and a “sick” guitar player I have to add. That’s his guitar playing on “Big Girl.” Arthur has worked with artists such as Sting, Sia, Willie Nelson and Norah Jones.
“And now he’s worked with John Beyer and Benjamin Hey!,” stated John.
John’s formal career is in moving and storage in New York, but he has always loved music. He sang at weddings and was writing a play about addiction (and now is 38 and a half years sober), but needed help. A longtime friend introduced him to Benjamin (also known as The Captain) who is an accomplished singer/songwriter/producer who writes songs daily.
Under the JBM imprint, they also write and produce pitch songs for other artists as well as songs for themselves. They have now released six songs together, 4 under the John Beyer name and two under Benjamin Hey!.
“Almost everything we’ve released was created together. We’re great collab partners!,” John said.
John said his goal is this: “I’d love to be driving down the road and hear JBM songs playing on the radio. I’m looking forward to when that happens.”
He has come close with “Love You More,” a single of his own released last year. It has reached No. 50 on the Mediabase chart and is getting national radio airplay. That is another song to his daughter, who now has a daughter of her own.
It is a pop-rock tune with some vibes from 1950s crooner songs and early ’60s rock.
“Yeah,” he said. “A little Beach Boys sound too.”
“When you look at these songs that we’ve done, they are incredibly varied,” he said. “You have R&B, you have hip-hop, you have pop, you have drama pop, you have some adult contemporary & rock. It’s a very varied group of music, and it’s just what comes out of us.”
He and Benjamin get together and talk about ideas, start bantering back and forth and from that emerges the message, the melody and ultimately the song.
He says that, for him, the concept and the message come first, “and then we build a hook and a rhythm around that.” Fathers and daughter dynamics in “Big Girl” and “Love You More,” addiction and recovery in “Powerless,” a song he wrote for his play that led him Benjamin Hey!
Next up for them is “YOLO FOMO MOFO,” a pop/hip-hop song coming out around the end of the year. They are also planning a showcase in Manhattan next year featuring him and The Captain. Mia Gentile and other artists will also be there.
“”YOLO…” is a short, fun song that talks about how you have to live your life. I live my life with a sense of urgency to accomplish and do great things.”
“Big Girl,” released in the last month, has gotten more streams “out of the gate than any song we’ve done so far.”
John comes from the time of Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Billy Joel and Barry Manilow. The Captain comes from the world of hip-hop, pop and R&B.
“We come from different walks of life, but we have a synergy here, and it’s working,” he said.
Connect to John Beyer on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts, and help drive “Big Girl” onto the airwaves. It’s worth it.
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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.
