ON THE RISE
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Lettie Law is a vessel for God’s message and she spreads it through her music. She gives Him all the credit for the songs she releases, which she says come to her from Him directly. Her latest single, “Forward Ever Backward Never Jesus” is one that celebrates the ever lasting power she believes He has.
When I spoke to Lettie, I could feel how strong and at peace she was just from our conversation. She shared a variety of stories of her life with me and God was the constant throughout all of them. She has a writing process for her songs but as earlier mentioned, she always credits Him with giving them to her.
“I write songs as they come to me from the Divine. Something is whispering to me to tell me what to write, how to sing it and what instruments go with it. Sometimes I’ll get partial parts of a song gradually but for this song, everything came together at the same time. It all comes from Heaven and I give out what I receive from the Almighty.” she said.
Sharing God’s message is a part of every song Lettie releases but this one was specifically crafted to encourage people who are dealing with everything happening in the world today. Lettie sees all the turmoil people are going through in the world and wants people to know that they will make it through any situation they find themselves in.
“No matter what is going on in life at this current time, you can look to God. If yesterday was not good for you, you don’t need to look back. Look to God and there is no way He will not deliver you. Keep moving forward and doing your best and look to God.” she said.
Lettie believes that music and singing can bring people joy, hope, courage and also healing. The latter can come in the emotional sense but also the physical sense too. During our conversation, she shared a story about how one of her other songs, titled “Yaweh” had a large impact on someone’s life.
“My favorite thing about music is how it can be healing. Not all diseases are physical. A woman called me had shared how she had been dealing with insomnia for eight years and had taken all kinds of medication for it. But once she started listening to my song, she would sleep like a baby.” she said.
Lettie Law knows about the power of God and music from firsthand experience. She shared that while she enjoyed singing in front of the congregation at church as a child, this changed as she began to get older. She became more shy and reserved not just in church but in life and in general.
Her shyness and reluctance to sing became the catapult that would push her to sing as God wanted her to after she went through a life altering situation.
“I ended up getting sick and my son suggested I record one of the songs I had written in the books I had from years ago. But once I started recording more, the sickness left my body. But recording and singing in public are very different. So it became a tug of war between me and the Lord because He wanted me to sing publicly but I didn’t want to.” she said.
“A different situation happened and I ended up in a coma and I could hear various voices around me as I faded in and out. I thought I was dying but I woke up on this side and realized I was still alive. The Lord asked me ‘Are you ready to do My work now?’ And I said ‘Of course! I’ll sing in front of the congregation. I will tell my story to the world. Wherever you send me, I am going.’ And when I woke up, all my family members who I had heard while I was fading in and out apologized because I heard them planning for my funeral and things like that. So the Lord spared my life and I’m not shy anymore. The Lord gave me strength and I chose life.” she said.
As Lettie said, she truly did go wherever God sent her. She’s since sung at Boston College, in Connecticut, at churches and even a club.
“University students love Christ. They were singing and dancing and they wanted me to come back. In the club, people were drinking and smoking and couples were dancing and it was nice because everybody belongs to the Almighty. God sees a sinner and knows one day they will become one of His children.” she said.
Lettie Law is West African with her father being from Nigeria and her mother being from Cameroon. The range of the diaspora is felt throughout “Forward Ever Backward Never Jesus” whose production is far from traditional Gospel instrumentation and blends a variety of musical styles. The positive and uplifting atmosphere is felt through both the instruments and the lyrics.
For many Gospel artists, their foundation was laid by someone older than them that raised them in church and likely also had them singing in church as child. For Lettie, this person was her father.
“He played a very big role in introducing me to Gospel and the Almighty. He introduced me to reading the Bible and he and my Mom introduced me to reading hymns.” she said.
Lettie Law has a 10 track album coming soon which will include songs like “Prayer is a Masterkey” and “God is Our All in All.” Her journey with Gospel has encapsulated her whole life and her ongoing faith continues to motivate her to keep making more music.
“I am just a vessel for His word and His message.” she said.
“Forward Ever Backward Never Jesus” is available on streaming services now.
You can experience more of God’s messages through Lettie Law by following her on these platforms.
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.
