The album’s arrival is amplified by news that VH1 has just handpicked The Script for their powerful You Oughta Know artist campaign scheduled to begin in March. Recent You Oughta Know artists have included Adele, Sara Bareilles, Leona Lewis and Duffy, all of whom are 2009 Grammy Nominees. This extremely talented trio’s debut has already spawned numerous hit singles abroad, including the band’s first official U.S. single, “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” which reached #1 in 5 countries. (pull)THE SCRIPT is currently 2x platinum in the UK, 5x platinum in Ireland, and is a story of both tragedy and triumph, struggle and survival – the epic journey of 3 Dublin boys from the wrong side of the tracks.(/pull) “Irish people have soul,” according to Danny. “It comes from generations of pain, and generations of understanding emotion to be able to physically get that in a solid sound.”
The Script are Dubliners Danny O’Donoghue (keys and vocals), Mark Sheehan (guitar) and Glen Power (drums). Danny and Mark met in their teens on the streets of Dublin. Through their passionate love for music they began their own songwriting and production team. It didn’t take long before their exceptional talent was recognized and the duo found themselves in Los Angeles working with the likes of Dallas Austin, Teddy Riley, and The Neptunes. At that time, they discovered Glen, a drummer back in Dublin. The duo became a trio and the dynamic shifted. Separately they each had their own talent, but together what they found they had was exceptional. And so, The Script went into production on their own.
2008 was a whirlwind year for The Script. The UK release of their debut album landed at #1, they performed at the World Music Awards where they received The Best Irish Band Award, participated in the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize Concert, headed out on the road for their first UK headlining tour whereby all dates sold out in less than 24 hours – with dates in their native Ireland selling out in 10 minutes – and just last week enjoyed the excitement of seeing their album return to # 1 on the UK album chart.
Kicking things off for The Script in America are huge national promotional campaigns with both CBS and VH1.Tracks from the album are being featured in the hit CBS show, The Ghost Whisperer as well as in VH1’s new show, Sober House – which will feature The Script’s music all season long. On Saturday January 31st, The Script will perform tracks from their forthcoming debut on The CBS Saturday Early Show.
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This is THE SCRIPT. But the ending is not yet written.
Dramatis Personae:
Danny O’Donaghue (25): Raven haired, handsome, sensitive keyboard player with the vocal flexibility and technical range of an American soul legend. “The truth is, I spent a lot of my childhood singing when the other kids were outside playing football and getting into trouble.”
Mark Sheehan (27): Shaven headed production whizz and guitarist. “I’m not trying to romanticise it, where we grew up was a shit hole, it was stealing cars, all the usual bollocks, but music gave me a sense that I could break away. I know it sounds like a cliche, but to me, as a kid, that was my way out.”
Glen Power (28): Taciturn drummer and multi-instrumentalist, the funkiest white man in Dublin. “My mother always said to find one thing in life that you’re good at and the day I picked up the sticks I found it.”
(pull)The Script are an Irish trio whose music boasts the kind of artful twists sure to turn all preconceptions on their head. This is a whole new brand of Celtic Soul, blending hip hop lyrical flow with pop melodiousness, state-of-the-art R’n’B production with anthemic rock dynamics, classic song construction with gritty contemporary narratives.(/pull) It’s got all the emotion and passion you would expect from across the Irish sea, but it is glittering in its modernity, universal in its singalong addictiveness and global in its syncopation, music for the feet, heart and head. Think U2 versus Timbaland, Van Morrison remixed by Teddy Riley. “Irish people have soul,” according to Danny. “It comes from generations of pain, and generations of understanding emotion to be able to physically get that in a solid sound.” “Soul is not a black thing or a white thing, it’s a human thing,” insists Mark. “The true vision is to hit people in the heart,” declares Glen. Danny and Mark met in their early teens in the run down James Street area of Dublin, near the Guinness brewery, gravitating to each other through a shared obsession with music, and in particular a love of American black music. “At that time, MTV only came on in Dublin after midnight, it was the fuzzy channel, and for my generation black culture was just a wave through us all,” explains Mark. “It wasn’t about gangs and guns; it was fashion and fun, singing and dancing.” “One day I heard Stevie Wonder singing and the hairs on the back of my neck went up,” says Danny. “I didn’t even know people could sing like that, I’d never heard the acrobatics of it before.” He spent years in his bedroom, practising vocal licks. “I’d try and emulate all those records, even down to string arrangements. Some of the best singers have emulated a musical instrument – Amy Winehouse is a saxophone – but the violin is the one for me, the vibrato, you can bring so much heartfelt emotion in.” “There is something about the way a voice encapsulates a person,” says Mark. “The way Danny sings, the raw emotion, when you hear it in front of you, you cannot deny the power.”
Striking up a songwriting and production partnership, Danny and Mark’s exceptional talent was recognised early, and, to their astonishment, they found themselves invited to the States to collaborate with some of their production heroes, including such legends of modern R’n’B as Dallas Austin, Teddy Riley, The Neptunes and Rodney Jerkins. “It was a wonderful opportunity to see how these guys build songs,” admits Mark, who always carried a little computer drive around and charmed his heroes into swapping libraries of sounds and samples. Danny and Mark started as a backroom team, making demos for other artists, but when they met fellow Dublin drummer Glen, the dynamic shifted. Although they had never actually heard him play, such was the connection they made that Mark invited Glen on a working holiday to LA. “He just whipped the ass off all these LA session musos,” enthuses Mark. “He is the funkiest drummer around with real energy and swing but Glen is also a fantastic guitarist, a fantastic keyboard player and he sings his ass off too.” Something of a prodigy on the Dublin scene, Glen had been playing sessions from fifteen years old, using the money to work on a solo project in his home studio. But that went on hold when his collaboration with Mark and Danny produced three songs in one week. (pull)”It was like I found my home playing with these guys,” says Glen. “I had never had a chance with any other band to express myself with such freedom.” “Individually, we all had our own talents, but together it just went to another level,” according to Danny.(/pull) And so The Script went into production. But it has not all been happy ever after. When Mark’s mother became terminally ill, the trio returned to Dublin so that he could spend time with her, recording in his old home studio in James Street. “That was pulling on my heart strings in a big way,” admits Danny. “Lyrically it was pouring out of me.” After ten months, Mark’s mother passed away. Four months later, Danny’s father, also a professional musician, died unexpectedly of a heart attack. “I came home so that Mark could spend time with his mum, little did I know that I was actually getting to spend that precious time with my dad,” reveals Danny. “But then amidst all this travesty and disaster, these songs have risen out of it. That was the time when it finally came home to me how important music was to me, cos in my darkest moments that’s what got me through.” The trio’s debut single, ‘We Cry’, will be released by Phonogenic/ SonyBMG in April 2008. And it is something special, a soulful anthem of everyday struggle that manages to be simultaneously bleak and uplifting. “There is not a lot of hope in the song, cause not everybody’s life is full of hope,” explains Danny. “There’s not always roses at the end. But out of all these things that have gone wrong in our lives and everybody else’s lives, the message is ‘together we cry’. Because as long as we’re here together then we can find a way to share the burden.” “There is a whole lifetime in these songs,” says Mark. “We don’t write them in ten minutes. A song takes nurturing, it is an evolving thing. This is a journey, we are in constant change, constant motion. I can’t ever put my finger on what exactly The Script is, I don’t even think I should, all I know is that it is something that touches me deep inside, and seems to touch other people when we play.” It is time to flip The Script.
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