- Danny O’Donoghue opens up about the death of his longtime bandmate Mark Sheehan and how that led to a journey with sobriety
- The frontman recalls the story of writing the band’s hit song “Breakeven”
More than one year after The Script’s Mark Sheehan died, the Irish band is back with new music — and they’re wearing their hearts on their sleeves.
Sheehan, who was a founding member of the band alongside Danny O’Donoghue and Glen Power, died in April 2023 following a brief illness at age 46.
Months after Sheehan’s death, O’Donoghue, 43, found himself turning to drinking and smoking as a coping mechanism. Then, on the “27th of December,” he chose sobriety and has maintained it ever since.
“I’m going through a really, really tough time,” O’Donoghue tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I think I’m handling it in the best way I possibly can.”
Unsure if the band could continue making music, O’Donoghue says The Script decided to give it a go and wrote about what they were feeling — which led to the birth of Satellites.
Read about O’Donoghue’s experience with sobriety, the inspiration behind the album and the fun story behind their hit song “Breakeven” below. Spoiler: it has something to do with Love Actually.
Where did the inspiration behind Satellites comes from?
We lost our guitarist last year, Mark. So we left ourselves with nowhere to go, really. When something like that happens, it can really rock you. So, we tried to write, and then it just started getting a little better, a little easier with each song. We started to become more ourselves again, [trying to] work our way through some of the emotions that we’d been going through.
At what point did the album start coming together?
It was when I came up with the lyrics of “Gone,” which deals directly with Mark’s passing. The lyrics are, “Like a shooting star across the sky, in a second you were gone. Why do stars that light up twice as bright only burn for half as long?”
I just thought that it was a beautiful way to remember somebody and celebrate their life as opposed to mourning the loss. In Ireland, that’s what we try to do anyway. We try and, as much as you can, smile through the tears instead of letting them grasp you, surround you and pull you down. So that was the inspiration was to do something for us because we were in a mess. And then what it’s done is, it’s actually galvanized everybody to having something to aim at.
What is the overall message of Satellites?
We’re not alone going through it. That’s what we feel is really important. It’s a bit of a movement right now for us to have been through all that we’ve been through. The mad part for me is that I know The Script family fan base longer than some of my friends in my life. We’re at 17 years as a band, so people have known us and been invested in us longer than one of our in-ear monitoring guys I met last year.
Is there one song on the album that you think will be especially cathartic to perform?
There’s a song called “Home is Where the Hurt Is.” I can’t even listen to it without welling up because it reminds me of my past and it has so much emotion built into that one song. Normally if I have that feeling like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I want to perform this, it might be too much,’ that’s the song that rockets. That’s the song that once you sing it that first time, everyone in the audience gets involved in it. I hadn’t felt about a song like that since “For the First Time.”
How has Sheehan’s death opened your eyes to the conversation around mental health?
Guys are so s— at talking about how they f—ing feel. All I’m here doing is trying to just show people, look, if you let it out, it’s a lot better. If you let it out, great things can happen. People think you let it out, bad things are going to happen. Nothing but good has happened to me in my life.
My whole entire career is me being really, really messed up, broken, going to write it down, and then that piece of paper going around to the rest of the world and everybody being like, “Oh s—, have you seen what this guy wrote? Oh, well, I want to go see this guy now” because of what he read in that moment. If I hadn’t done that, it would’ve never happened. It would’ve stayed on the inside.
What inspired you to open up about your journey with sobriety?
The Script is just about being open. Music is about the truth. I chose to be very open and very upfront about it because I have to be. I just lost my best mate of 30 years. Everybody knows I’m hurting. I have an opportunity here to tell people through my experience what I did to get right.
And what I mean by that is you can’t… I was talking about grief and I was saying, your friends might think that the best thing for you is like, “Oh, let’s try and change your mind. Let’s bring him out, have a few drinks, forget about that person or this, that.” Actually, the worst thing you can do is go and drink alcohol, because what you’re inevitably doing is kicking those issues down the road. And it’s bloody tough, man. I came back after I spent pretty much most of Christmas just drinking my ass off, trying to forget stuff.
I came back on the 27th of December and I just said, “That’s it.” So I quit alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine even. You can imagine all of those on the one day. I started going to church every day, and then I work out three times a week.
I don’t know what it’s doing, but it’s just absolutely incredible, the turnaround. Even though I’m going through a really, really tough time, I think I’m handling it in the best way I possibly can.
You introduced two new band members in May: Ben Sargeant and Ben Weaver. How has it been having two new people around?
Well, that’s always really fun, because if you change any kind of ingredient to the cake, it’s different. And we’re lucky, Ben Weaver has always been a session musician or part of our stage crew, but actually having him involved in the writing sessions this time around, it brought more of that feeling of we’re all in it together. We just want to hear what everybody has to say. Everybody’s more willing, because we understand that life is short, man.
And then we’ve got this new guitarist, Ben Weaver, who’s just been a revelation. We were in a hole thinking f— it, how are we going to do these songs? How are we going to even try and create more? He just slotted right in. It’s totally different energy and stuff to what Mark was, but still great. He’s still a badass in his own right.
Before we go, I have to ask about “Breakeven.” Looking back at the moment that song came together, did you imagine it would become the heartbreak anthem it is today?
No, I honestly didn’t. Because were broke musicians, we were on our first album and we were writing to save our lives. We were writing to eat back then. I broke up with the girl that I was dating at the time, and most of that album was trying to get her back. It was just trying to deal with the feelings of trying to get somebody back.
I was watching Love Actually, and there was a part in the movie where he knocks on the door and he’s like, “The greatest thing about me was always you and stuff.” And I was like, “What am I supposed to do when the best part of me was always you? Oh, s—.” And I went and I wrote it. I just wrote the lyrics down and I had that chorus, and Mark had the idea already for “Breakeven.” He had this amazing lyric, “When a heart breaks it don’t break even.”
We went to a friend of ours and we wrote the rest of the song there. And it was like, it came together quite quickly. I got shivers listening to it, and then I got the same feeling with “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved,” to be honest. Those two were the last two songs that made the album, which is mad.
I didn’t realize at the time how many famous people would sing the song. It ended up being taught at Berklee [College of Music] as the perfect pop song, which is hilarious because I’m dyslexic and also I failed music in school. So to have my words being taught to people, I’m like, I hope they spell it right, because I didn’t. Still to this day, I spell it wrong.
