Stuart Lee Murdoch (born 25 August 1968) is a Scottish musician, writer and filmmaker, and the lead singer and songwriter for the indie pop band Belle and Sebastian.

By early 1995 Murdoch had largely recovered from his illness and began to look for fellow musicians to form a band, which became Belle & Sebastian.

Murdoch's struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome is the subject of the song "Nobody's Empire" on Belle & Sebastian's album Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance.

Belle and Sebastian's first album included lines about "reading the Gospel to yourself," and on the second Murdoch sang of "the pain of being a hopeless unbeliever."

In 2009, Murdoch contributed the song "Another Saturday" to the AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night, produced by the Red Hot Organization.

[14] When talking about his life experience, he stated, “I realized pretty fast San Francisco is my kind of town.”[15] Murdoch has been diagnosed with Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome(ME/CFS).

[16] Sexually ambiguous lyrics in Belle & Sebastian's music have prompted Murdoch to confirm his heterosexuality in the press, calling himself "straight to the point of boring myself".