Whilst there might be a dearth of new England World Cup songs this year – it looks like us sassenachs are stuck with Three Lions and those years of hurt until the end of time – musicians north of the border have been getting creative with their own odes to the Scotland team.
Now, to add to Belle And Sebastian’s It Only Takes One Lion and the rather fantastic We’re Made In Scotland From Girders, a tune that features Susan Boyle and Franz Ferdinand that’s featured in the new Irn Bru ad, there’s The Very Unofficial Scotland World Cup Song by JJ Bull.
As you can tell, apart from name-checking current stars Kenny McLean, Kiernan Tierney and Scott McTominay (and Archie Gemmill – ask your grandad), it’s very obviously a tribute to James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem.
So who is JJ Bull? Well, he’s a bedroom musician, obviously. But he’s also a football writer, for The Telegraph and The Athletic.
Explaining how he came up with the idea for the song, he told NME: “I know this sounds weird but the entire thing just downloaded into my head from somewhere. It’s like I didn’t write it. This has happened a few times in my life and I’ve always liked those songs, so I had a few goes at making it sound like it did in my head and about three goes later landed on this one! The words, everything, were already written for me! What a boost.”
Asked whether he’s hopeful for a stamp of approval from Murphy, he said: “I’m hoping for nothing but people enjoying it and most people not hating it. I met James Murphy in Subclub Glasgow once, gave him a hug, gave him a CD of mine I had on me just in case.”
Paraphrasing LCD’s anthem Losing My Edge, he added: “I mean obviously if he liked it that would be nice, but I’d imagine he’d think: ‘The kids are coming up from behind – but this one I’m not concerned about actually…‘”
One thing previous Scotland World Cup songs have been noted for is humour, whether unintentional with Rod Stewart’s 1978 effort Ole Ola (‘we’re going to bring the World Cup back from over there’) or the 1982 squad’s endearingly-surreal We Have A Dream, or even Del Amitri’s wry 1998 song Don’t Come Home Too Soon (Scotland, you see, have yet to get past the group stage of the World Cup).
And clearly Bull has his tongue in his cheek somewhere too. Asked by NME what he thought of Scotland’s chances in the tournament, he replied: “Depending on who we get in the final, it should be a pretty straightforward win.”
