THE SCRIPT
July 14, 2015 - 9:30 pm
Irish stadium-rockers The Script are on top of the world right now, having sold over 20 million records, scored 4 multi-platinum albums and written some of the most iconic songs of the last decade: “Breakeven”, “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”, “Hall Of Fame”…
The trio’s first concert at Byblos is part of a massive world tour, in support of their latest album which includes the huge radio hits “Superheroes” and “No Good in Goodbye”.
Expect a dazzling show by one of the hottest bands on the planet!
THE SCRIPT
Meet The Script: Danny O’Donoghue (vocals, piano) his long time friend, Mark Sheehan (vocals, guitar) and Glen Power (vocals, drums). Three Irish men who are as direct and impassioned as their songs. These one-time studio whizzes stepped up to form a band, then, even though singles from their two previous albums were really popular like “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”, “Breakeven” (The Script album out in 2008), “For the First Time” (Science & Faith out in 2010) on their third album, they stepped front and center.
It was called “#3”, it featured the trio on the artwork, and did exactly what that no-nonsense cover and title intended. “The last album was us stepping out in to the light,” affirms Danny, as impressive a speaker as he is a frontman, but now with a top-spin of telegenic confidence, courtesy of his two seasons judging on The Voice on BBC1. “We’d been the faceless band before that,” he adds with typical candour. “We’d had two albums that were enormously successful but there was a disconnect : people might know the song but they wouldn’t know the band, or the name of the band.”
And their 2012 worldwide smash “Hall Of Fame”, a collaboration with Danny’s Voice co-judge will.i.am, changed all that. “That song put it in no doubt who this band were,” nods the singer. “We went full frontal. We went from being the alternative Irish pop/rock to the mainstream. And that was partly achieved by The Voice,” he acknowledges, explaining his band-focused reasons for taking the television gig in the first place. “The excitement and energy went off the Richter scale and it did that in America too. It feels like a festival crowd every time now” adds Glen. Such was the impact of The Script’s newfound live power.
“That sound on “#3”, we were loud and proud,” says Danny with well-earned satisfaction. “We’d spent a couple of tours trying to perfect the stadium-filling sound. And we found it with “Hall Of Fame”. And it was amazing to get to that on our third album, most bands these days don’t even get to their second album.”
The Script did get there and here is how: the #3 world tour in 2013 tour spanned 11 months and included shows throughout Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia and included 63 arenas (including 18 in the UK) and 18 festivals. The Script have now sold 20million records and all 3 albums have been multi-platinum throughout the world! Two UK Number One albums and a Number One single, sold over one million albums in the US, five platinum US singles (two of which are triple platinum). They’ve got “Hall Of Fame” as a worldwide Number One, with over five million sales, 100 million YouTube views, and over 100 million Spotify plays (making the service’s top 10 acts of all time).
They also won one World Music Award, three Meteor Awards, got nominated for two Brit Awards and last, but not least, The Queen personally invited the band to perform for her when she went in to Radio 1. “So that,” concludes Danny, “was job done.”
Then, of course, The Script had to do it all over again… but, somehow bigger, better, brighter. And again, it’s job done. The Script’s fourth album, “No Sound Without Silence”, is the sound of a band firing on all cylinders and channeling the momentum of their last, rocket-powered campaign. They finished touring “#3” at the end of last year and quickly re-entered their studios in London and Dublin. They had to: this trio of songwriters had had so many ideas while touring, they were bursting out of the specially-built mobile recording studio they’d taken with them on the bus.
The Script wanted their new songs to capture what Danny describes as “that nervous energy coming straight off stage. It was a bit uncontrollable at the start, it was shooting everywhere”. But gradually these seasoned writers/producers (they compose and record everything themselves) wrestled their songs into shape. So you have a song like the ultra-catchy “Superheroes”, the first single, blessed with an appropriate sense of sky-scraping uplift, and underpinned with crunchy guitar riffs. Then there’s “No Good In Goodbye”, destined to join “Breakeven”, “For The First Time” and “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” as a live singalong favourite.
As counterpoint there’s “Flares”, a gentle song build around rippling piano. It started off as love song, but after Danny’s mum suffered a brain aneurysm as the band began recording, it took on new meaning for the frontman. “It’s about faith – ‘did you see the flares in the sky, were you blinded by the light…’ And I did, yeah,” admits this otherwise sceptical man. “The situation changed and it was a miracle”. Like “Superheroes”, “Flares” is a “very uplifting song, about people getting past adversity”.
All that, and a modern Irish anthem, “Paint The Town Green”, which is an energetic, feel-good, party-on hymn to the spirit of their homeland. “We’re not crying on the page and it’s not super-emotional as a song, but it’s more about missing home and talking about what every emigrant around the world feels”. The Script better get used to that. “No Sound Without Silence” and its impassioned, catchy, emotional songs will be keeping them on the road, all over the place, for a good while to come and Byblos Festival will be part of this long tour!
