ON THE RISE
“Not Gonna Do What You Say” is a defiant, get-angry-and-celebrate-it, anti-war, anti-establishment pop synth track from Austin, Texas, duo Millennium Resorts.
From a seat on the couch, drinking a beer, sipping wine, or maybe out on the dance floor, you can raise a fist to the grinding bass, the drums, the synth, the guitar and shout “Yeah!”
It began with a beat from Jonathan, guitar, synth head (self-proclaimed) and producer.
“I told Scott I had a hook, a real simple hook for it in my head, which ended up being the melody. I didn’t really have lyrics for it, but Scott really liked it,” said Jonathan, “and I thought it should be one of our songs because I just liked the melody I had in my head, and I thought it could go somewhere.”
Scott, percussion and drummer and, except for “Not Gonna Do What You Say,” the primary vocalist, came up with some lyrics, sang a sample and sent it to Jonathan.
“What inspired that was I just thought what I was hearing could be like an anthem, something people could shout,” said Scott.
“I went, ‘Hey, that’s cool. I like the idea of singing “not going to do what you say.” What would that mean?’ And then I ended up just ranting about, you know, tyranny, in the lyrics.”
Close our eyes
Demoralized
While you devise
Our demise
One day you’ll pay
For all your crimes
But in the meantime I’m
And then the first line of the chorus:
Not gonna do what you say
Scott didn’t necessarily have a meaning to “not gonna do what you say,” but, said Jonathan, “sometimes you come up with lyrics and you just have an intuition, which is how I write a lot, too, and then you figure out what it means.”
“We don’t want this to be political, but at the same time,” said Scott, “we feel like people could really unite behind this message right now, something that everybody’s kind of feeling where they’re just kind of sick and tired of the power structure and the tyranny.”
Their music is like the offspring of rock married to electronic. Jonathan describes it having the esthetic of Pink Floyd, but “we love synthesizers and we love a lot of EDM, too.”
“In terms of songwriting, we want it to be more like a song, with a verse and a real chorus,” he said.
“Rather than just like a build-up and a drop,” said Scott.
“For the sake of dancing,” added Jonathan. “We’re very influenced by that, but we wanted to take that influence and make more like a pop song with it.”
They have both been in different bands through the years.
Jonathan says, “I’ve been kind of alone in my room for a long time — a lot of ideas and never finishing them. I’m the kind of person who needs a friend just to light a fire under me and get me going.”
They created a 10-track album at the beginning of this year after putting out two versions of two tracks in 2023. Scott was the primary vocalist on those, but Jonathan takes the lead on “Not Gonna Do What You say.”
“We wanted to make a big album,” said Scott. “We thought that was the cool thing to do, thought it was a good idea to make this gigantic Dark Side of the Moon-type concept album.”
“Turns out, we were wrong about that,” Scott laughs. Going forward, they will focus on putting out singles.
Scott has also, up to now, been the primary writer. He came up with the name of the group, Millennium Resorts.
“Millennium sounds kind of futuristic, sci-fi, and resorts — just the idea of, like, synth wave and palm trees, that sort of thing.”
“It became a more collaborative thing,” said Jonathan. “I’m having a bigger writing role because I’m constantly coming up with ideas and things like that.”
“And I sing a lot of backup vocals that I snuck in there on that first album.”
“Not Gonna Do What You Say” may end up on an album next year, but first comes singles, beginning early next year.
“We’ve got a bunch of other songs in the pipe that I think are pretty promising,” said Jonathan.
Find out what they’re singing and what they’re gonna sing and connect to Millennium Resorts on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
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.
