Belle and Sebastian Release Scotland World Cup Anthem “It Only Takes One Lion”

The morning after Scotland beat Denmark to secure a World Cup qualifying spot, Stuart Murdoch wrote a song. That track, “It Only Takes One Lion,” now gets an official release on Matador.

Belle and Sebastian first played it in April at the Royal Albert Hall, folded into a world tour celebrating their first two albums, Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister. The studio version, produced and co-written with Pete Fergueson, keeps the same unguarded feel. Murdoch describes it as “a personal song about following the travails of Scotland’s national team for the last 50 years” and says it “came out naturally the day after the game against Denmark. The song tries to encompass the experience of the whole country following Scotland.”

The result isn’t a standard rallying cry. It’s a quiet, lived-in piece of music that maps a long, complicated relationship with hope and disappointment, the kind of thing a country carries into a tournament whether it wins or not.