Belle and Sebastian turn Scottish World Cup fever into indie-pop sweetness

Belle and Sebastian making a Scottish World Cup anthem sounds almost too perfect, as if someone wrote the premise for a gentle indie-pop sitcom. It Only Takes One Lion arrives as Scotland prepares for a rare World Cup moment, and Stuart Murdoch’s long-standing emotional connection to the national team gives the track more heart than a standard novelty football song. The best sporting anthems understand that the game is never only about the game. It is memory, family, disappointment, hope and a lot of grown adults pretending not to be superstitious. Belle and Sebastian are unusually well suited to that emotional territory. Their music has always understood awkward devotion, communal feeling and the romance of slightly doomed optimism. It Only Takes One Lion may be tied to football, but underneath the scarves and slogans is something very recognisable: the small miracle of people deciding to believe together.

Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/belle-and-sebastian-made-a-scottish-world-cup-anthem