It's been a rags to riches glory ride, an emotional
rollercoaster, an all action, all-star blockbuster. Three young Dubliners took
on the world, with music fashioned from the emotional detritus of their own
hard lives raised up by a love of pop, rock, hip hop and soul. In two years
they've notched up a handful of hit singles around the world, including
"We Cry", "Breakeven" and "The Man Who Can't Be
Moved". Their 2008 self-titled debut album,The Script, went to number one
in the UK and Ireland, and is now approaching 2 million sales worldwide.
They've played stadium shows with music heroes U2, Take That and Sir Paul
McCartney, and to cap it all, "Breakeven" - which has already sold
over 1.7 million downloads in the U.S. alone - rewrote history here in America
on Billboard's Adult Pop Songs radio airplay chart to take the # 1 spot where
the song completed a record-setting 36-week rise to the summit.
But that was just the first draft. It's now time to write a whole new Script.
The scene is a recording studio in London. Two young Irishmen are listening to
playback. Handsome, dark haired Danny O'Donoghue is The Script's
charismatic vocalist and keyboard player. Shaven headed Mark Sheehan is
their intense, loquacious guitarist. Third member, friendly but taciturn
drummer and multi-instrumentalist Glen Power is in an adjoining
studio, laying down a beat. Danny and Mark cannot sit still. They are leaping
about to the music blasting from huge speakers, an addictive blend of hip hop
rhythms, flowing melodies, sparkling hooks and emotive, story-spinning lyrics,
with Danny's mellifluous soulful vocals riding high over huge, anthemic
choruses. This is their forthcoming second album, Science & Faith, and
it's fair to say the band is excited.
"We've gone from playing small clubs to performing in theatres, at
festivals and in stadiums," says Mark. "It's a little bit shocking to
us as new band, playing to these mass audiences. And we feel we have to touch
everybody, hit ever fucker in there."
"I'm just so excited about this record," declares Danny. "We are
more confident about our sound, so you really want to fine tune your writing
skills. Find the essence of what we do songs that mean something that people
would like to sing out loud at a concert." "We've had to really think
about who we are, what we are, and why it matters," continues Mark.
"Take all that experience and try and do something positive with it. We
really just want to nail that last album. Put it to the wall."
The studio door flies open, and in bursts drummer Glen. "I've nailed that
track lads!" he declares. "Wait til you hear it! I've got blisters on
my hands!"
The Script are like this all the time, highly passionate, sincere and
poetically articulate, with a tendency to talk over each other in their
eagerness to express themselves. The journey to their new album has been a
strange one, with many twists and turns. Danny and Mark met in their early
teens in Dublin, and had a long struggle for musical recognition, albeit
picking up early admirers for their prodigious songwriting talent in U2. They
somehow wound up in the U.S., working as songwriters and producers with such
R&B heroes as Dallas Austin, Teddy Riley and The Neptunes. A chance
encounter with Glen focussed their ideas on making their own music, and the
trio was formed. But in the midst of recording their debut album in Dublin,
both Mark's mother and Danny's father passed away, inspiring bittersweet live
favorite "The End Where I Begin". A meteoric rise through the world's
charts followed but, even at the moment of their greatest triumph, they found
themselves having to keep their pride in check, as their native Ireland sank
into a devastating economic crisis, amongst the hardest hit of European nations
following the credit crunch.
And this is where the new chapter in The Script's tale really began.
"We were coming back to Dublin victorious, only to be confronted with
stark reality," recalls Danny. "It's like you've waited for that
great day when you can say, 'I've finally made it' and everyone else is saying,
'My life has turned to shit'."
"I actually felt really guilty," admits Mark. "Meeting my mates
who used to tell me I might need to get a real job to support my family, and
buying me a beer when I was the one who was suffering. The tables have turned
quite considerably, and you want to be a little bit excited and go, 'oh, man,
we just played with McCartney, we just got to number one,' but they're going 'I
just lost my job', or 'I split up with my wife."
"What's going on in Ireland is a microcosm for the rest of the
world," suggests Danny. "So here we were back in Dublin and there are
a lot of relationships going on and we're seeing people who have met under
money, under the Celtic Tiger, and they've never known what to do without
money. People are getting stripped of everything, stripped of their jobs and
their homes and their furniture, so it's going to back to an old thing of
drinking cheap bottles of wine, having dinner on the floor, nothing but
candlelight, and it's like they are meeting each other for the first time. But
I'm not saying that in a bad sense. Its getting back to reality, you are
standing naked in front of this person. That notion really resonated with us,
and we wrote a song, "For the First Time". I felt like it was
something that could be a real flagship, to set the tone for what we want to
talk about, emotionally. And the rest has spun off from there."
The songs came thick and fast. "Exit Wounds", about the damage
relationships can wreak. "You Won't Feel A Thing", about suffering
all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to protect your most loved
ones. "Nothing" about a drunken, broken hearted phone call to a lost
love ("We've all been there," as Danny says). "Don't Change A
Thing" about always leaving the door open for the possible return of a
loved one. And the title track, "Science & Faith", about the
primacy of love in the universal equation. "With all of these subjects,
we're always trying to attack at a level where it's optimistic," insists
Danny. "We're dealing with complex emotions in the simplest of ways,
that's what we battle with in these songs."
"On first listen, the subject matter might sound bleak," says Mark.
"But I think being Irish there is this undertone of hope all the time.
It's about having coping skills to get over things. With Irish people, no
matter how bad things get, you always pick yourself up and carry on."
The Script are songwriters of the first order, combining thoughtful,
heartfelt lyrics with lush melodies. They still pronounce themselves
incredulous that Paul McCartney personally asked The Script to
support him at a series of American stadium shows. "That was pretty mad,
that he loved our songs, he knew them, came and watched us while we were
playing on stage," says Mark. "He said the reason he picked us was
our message is very humble and honest. We're not preaching, we invite people into our world, and our experiences,
and to relate to us. He felt like we were dealing with important stuff."
There can surely be no higher honor for a songwriter than the imprimatur of a
Beatle. But that's where The Script operate, in the highest realms of
pop, easily accessible yet artistically, emotionally and spiritually resonant.
"I don't see us as anything other than lads from Dublin," admits
Mark. "I don't feel like I'm in some big band. We come in and we make
really heartfelt music. I get to really express myself in this band. And that's
as far as it goes for me. I'm not trying to change the world. I'm not trying to
heal anybody. I generally find most of these songs are healing myself because
getting them out has certainly helped externalise the feelings. "The End
Where I Begin" is such a poignant song for us, from losing parents, that
when we play it people ask 'do you feel like your reopening those wounds every
night?' Well, yeah, I honestly do. I set myself up for that song, I remind
myself why it was written and what it was all about, and then we play it. Yet
it's not tough for me at all. I feel justified. I feel like I'm actually
sharing something that you all relate to. You have all lost somebody too. You
can all understand exactly where this is coming from. And it feels good to do
that."
"You know what The Script is?" says Danny. "It's the
journey from a feeling of devastation in the pit of my stomach, for me to be
able to think about that, put it into words, to be able to sing it, a band to
play it, for you to hear it, to go to your brain, to understand it and for you
to replicate that same feeling. It's such an amazing thing. You couldn't work
it out with a calculator. But that's what we try and do."
"And that's the pay off," says Mark. "The thought of some person
somewhere sitting in their apartment putting our music on because they are
hurting and we're the soundtrack to that emotion, whatever is going on in their
life. That to me is the greatest power of music. And I cannot get over that
they might choose our record. Cause I do that. I sit in a room and pick out a
song to articulate my feelings. It floors me every time."
Get ready for the return of The Script. There are going to be more twists
in this tale before it is done.
