The Script return via Satellites.
L-R: Glen Power, Danny O’Donoghue, Ben Weaver, Ben Sargeant. Image: Jordan Rossi.
The Script were formed in Dublin and went on to score a string of number-one albums between 2008 and 2019. The current line-up is drummer Glen Power, bassist Ben Sargeant, guitarist Ben Weaver and lead singer Danny O’Donoghue, who spoke to us about their latest release, Satellites.
It will be The Script’s first album since the death last year of co-founder and guitarist Mark Sheehan. The band decided to fix on a release date before starting work to give them a focus in the midst of their grief. “Putting that flag in the sand was a godsend,” says O’Donoghue. “It made everybody galvanize around the same dream – not just me, the other guys in the band, our management, our families, my girlfriend, the structure we have around us, our fans – a lot of people who were very, very lost after what happened.” At first, they were unsure if they would succeed but concentrating on the album proved to be the best therapy. “We didn’t know whether we’d be able to write something that we would like. How different is it going to be without Mark? Is there an appetite for that? Are we doing it too soon? If we don’t do it now, will it be too late? But as soon as you put work in front of you, all those questions go, because you’re concentrating on the work.”
Without his sparring partner of thirty years, O’Donoghue realized that they might need outside help to get the record over the line. Sessions with Steve Robson yielded the first two singles to be released from Satellites: “At Your Feet” and “Both Ways”, the latter also benefitting from the input of Glen Power and songwriter Wayne Hector, while O’Donoghue and Hector’s shared influences (“Sting, The Police, that kind of vibe”) delivered “Promises”.
“You’re never going to get rid of the grief, but you can at a certain point learn to grow around it, and I feel that’s what I’m trying to do”
Another key collaborator on the album was Iain Archer, who co-wrote what some people thought should be its first single, “One Thing I Got Right”. The lyric was an idea O’Donoghue had been playing around with for years. “I’ve fucked up so many times in my life and I think a lot of people would feel the same way – ‘I always say the wrong things, I get drunk, I mess up at parties, but if the one thing that I got right was you, then you can fuck everything else!’” Working in Archer’s Brighton studio, he spotted his harpsichord. “I'd never seen one, I'd never played one, and I just sat at it and started playing. You can hear it on the start of the track, me having a bit of a bash on it.” From there, they found a way to work the lyrics into a song: “I started to sing the chorus over, and Iain was like, ‘Man, there’s something here.’ We tried to do it like a classic Script song with a bit of bass in it, the kind of harmonic Chili Peppers bass. There’s different things on the production as well: if you notice, the second chorus, we dropped the drums out, it sounds like we do a drop chorus, and then the drums come in halfway just to keep the dynamics of the song.”
Much as he loves it, O’Donoghue knew it wasn’t right as the launch single. By listening to what’s currently being played on the radio, he can get a feel for which songs are most likely to get airplay. “I want The Script to be well-known so I try to get the most people to hear the songs, to then make their mind up whether they like the idea.” He has a sense that some songs are destined to stay as album tracks – “You can meet somebody cool in a bar, and they don't want to be out there, they don't want to be on Instagram. Some songs are like that: ‘I just want to be a cool song on the record, I don't want to be played on the radio’” – but he also relies on his colleagues for their expertise. “Within the label we have our A&R guy, Jamie Nelson, who's fantastic. He's basically a dealer in music – he's got hundreds of tracks every week that he has to sell to the radio stations. So he's a great judge.” The rest of the band and management get their say too – “I love leading by consensus. It's safer that way!”
Image: Jordan Rossi.
Maintaining a fair power balance between its members has kept The Script together through the recent hard times as well as through their greatest successes. When their first album debuted at number one, they could have been expected to go wild but they kept to a strict set of rules from the outset. “Not that we didn't enjoy it, because my God did we enjoy it! But we had these rules that were hard at the time but we knew that they were the best thing for the band. We always split everything three ways, regardless of who wrote anything. When we first got our lump sum from the label, we put it into a bank account and said we’d try and pay ourselves a wage over the course of a year or two. We also had no nepotism, so we didn't hire our girlfriends, we didn't have any of our family involved. I think that was a very important rule for the decisions that were being made to be only made by the people that it mattered to.”
The Script are currently supporting P!nk before their headline tour of Europe and the UK at the end of the year. Dates are selling out fast, and the band are settling into a new phase after the toughest year they’ve known. “You’re never going to get rid of the grief, but you can at a certain point learn to grow around it, and I feel that's what I'm trying to do,” says O’Donoghue, a very private person who has had to mourn his best friend in public. He’s aware that the loss of Sheehan could have spelt the end not just of The Script but of his life in music, so to be promoting Satellites today feels like an extraordinary achievement. “All these songs could just be sitting on a shelf now; I could be in fucking rehab; I could maybe not be here. So I'm grateful for music being somebody that I've gone to time and time again, that has never judged me or questioned me. I can say anything to music, and it just goes, ‘Right, let’s throw a melody behind it. Let's get this thing to the people.’ Which I love, I fucking love that about music. It's life-changing, life-saving – it’s just life for me.”
Satellites is available 9th August.
Author: Rachel Goodyear