Danny O’Donoughue didn’t know if The Script should carry on after Mark Sheehan died.
The guitarist passed away in April 2023 following a brief illness and his devastated bandmates, including drummer Glen Power, had a lot of conversations afterwards about what their future would look like without him.
Speaking to the new issue of RETROPOP magazine, singer Danny said: “When Mark passed away, everything got put on the backburner and we were really trying to round up the troops as far as, ‘Where do we go from here?’.
“Everybody was trying to work their way through the devastation and decide what’s next for us. You know, do we stop The Script? Or do we want to continue? […] I needed to finish what we’d started.
“What we’ve done so far in the music industry so far has been absolutely incredible – and even if my career did finish tomorrow I’d be really happy – but at the same time I’m a born musician and I love making music. Genuinely, I have no idea what I would do if I wasn’t in music.”
Despite the group’s grief, Danny insisted it doesn’t loom large over their new album ‘Satellites’ because they would rather “celebrate” their pal.
He said: “I’m sure people are expecting it to be quite an emotional album, or an album that deals in the past, but it’s not. It’s more of an optimistic album; it’s like, ‘Let’s stop grieving and start celebrating someone’s life’.”
The ‘Hall of Fame’ group formed in 2001 and Danny is thrilled that social media has give them a new generation of fans – particularly because it is the music they are focused on, not the band themselves.
He said: “It’s like an Indian summer, where we’ve got this whole brand new legion of new Script fans and that’s really exciting because I’m having meetings every week about content and putting out things that aren’t the ways that I would have thought our fans would connect with.
“So we’ve got loads of different ideas about how to market our music and the best way to get it out there, because people don’t actually give a s*** about me or the band.
“They just care about the songs, which is amazing because that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I just come free with the music – take me or leave me!”