The Script were on a high – a glorious, global high, and rightly so. With worldwide streams numbering 10 billion, 12 million albums sold, two platinum-selling US singles, six Number One UK albums and global ticket sales north of three million, the Irish band were touring the planet with their greatest hits collection Tales From The Script. It was 2022 and, 16 years after Danny O’Donoghue, Mark Sheehan and Glen Power formed the band in Dublin, this was a well-earned victory lap for a much-loved band.
That tour had been marked, during its opening, springtime leg in North America, by the absence of Mark. As Danny explained at the time of his friend of 30 years: "His children needed a father and his wife needed a husband."
“That's pretty much it,” the frontman reaffirms now. “He'd spent half of his life dedicated to the band and always put the band first.
The tour finally wound up in November 2022, and the band went their separate ways, taking a well-earned break for all. Then, in spring 2023, Danny booked time in a residential studio, “because we hadn't played as a band in a while”. But before they could get going with what Danny had envisioned as pre-album rehearsals. “I got the call to say that Mark had suddenly been admitted to hospital.”
After a short illness, tragically, Mark died. As with any grieving family, Danny is doing right by his best friend’s memory and right by his best friend’s wife and children.
There was more collective grieving, more joyous communion, on a string of 2023 dates supporting P!nk. Then, that Christmas, Danny went home to Dublin. After a festive reunion with his siblings over a Guinness or 10, the singer flew back to London with a new resolve. Several resolves, in fact. He was done with alcohol. He was done with mindless hours watching mindless content online. He was done, in fact, with all the apps on his smartphone – and with the phone itself.
