I was openly crying while I was writing about mum...
Six
THE Script’s Danny O’Donoghue is explaining how his band’s latest record was birthed from “one hell of a year”. “My mum passed, I wrote a song about her. My friends were there for me, I wrote a song about them...
“I went off the rails, I wrote a song about that. I got back on the rails – and I wrote a song about that as well,” he divulges.
The last 12 months have not been kind to Danny, 39, and his bandmates, guitarist Mark Sheehan, and drummer and bassist Glen Power.
Dublin-raised Danny split from his girlfriend, Brazilian model Anne de Paula, and lost his mother Ailish to a brain aneurysm on February 14 – Valentine’s Day.
In an eerie twist of fate, her death echoed that of Danny’s father, who died during the recording of The Script’s 2008 debut album – also on Valentine’s Day.
This year also saw Glen lose a parent, his father.
Never one to shy away from confessional song-writing, Danny channelled his grief into the band’s forthcoming sixth album, Sunsets and Full Moons. But why does he feel the need to do his soul-searching in public – often in front of hundreds of thousands of fans? “That’s my job,” he says.
“I believe that if I have a reason to be here on Earth, it’s to do that.
“There’s no other explanation for the s*** that I have been through. To not try and make something good out of it... to not become a recycling plant for pain and try and origami that into something beautiful to give the world...
Danny on stage and, above, the new album
“There’s a very famous saying, ‘The only justification there is for pain is art’.
“I do believe that. I really believe it. What else can you do with pain? What else can you do with the energy of a break-up or the loss of a family member?”
To deal with the death of his mother, Danny took up Thai boxing, or Muay Thai, and now practises the sport every week.
You couldn’t accuse the singer of being anything less than honest.
Often, he’s painfully so, offering up graphic details of his trauma like he’s in confession.
The Script’s critics attack the band’s heart-on-sleeve pop as cloying, saccharine and shallow.
But it is hard to argue with the stats – all but one of their five previous albums hit number one in the UK.
“There’s a massive symmetry,” he explains, comparing their debut to their latest work.
“We have had one hell of a year with the loss of two parents in our band and the birth of children as well,” he adds.
“It’s a very interesting time in a creative’s life to tune in and find out: ‘How does he feel about this? How is he coping with this?’
“It’s almost in real time. You realise when you have been in the public eye for a long time that you don’t just get to be in the public eye for good things.”
And what about the emotions he went into the studio to confront?
Lightning fast, he says: “Confusion, devastation... the building back up of somebody and something.”
One song on the album – Run Through Walls – was written just a week after he buried his mother.
“I was openly crying while I was writing the song. I had tears in my eyes nearly the whole time. But I knew it needed to be said and it needed to be written.”
He likens it to Eric Clapton’s Tears In Heaven, written by the guitarist in 1992 about the death of his four-year-old son. However, he makes pains to say he would “never ever” compare his talent to Clapton’s.
“They are the ones I rate – the ones who are brave enough to talk about those things you think you just can’t talk about. The unsaid.”
Sunsets and Full Moons is also a welcome return to the personal songwriting and unadorned power pop of their early records. They are returning the acoustic guitars and pianos to their rightful place.
Danny believes people are “crying out” for something simple and wholesome.
“There is a massive appetite out there for acoustic music,’ he says conspiratorially.
Given the band’s track record, Sunsets and Full Moons is likely to be a commercial success. But Danny is clear the only barometer of success he measures himself by is the fans.
With more than a whiff of defiance, he explains: “It’s very easy to dismiss us a pop act and go, ‘They are this and they are that’.
“But when you look at our craft, how long we have put into production, I’ve been producing nearly 24 years now.
“I’ve been a living songwriter, getting paid for what I do, for 24 years. Like I said, I feel entitled to preach from a certain standpoint about what I have been through this year.
“And I love the fact that I don’t care. I really don’t care what the critics say. All I know is that I bled on the page.”
The Script play Resorts World Arena, NEC, on February 28.