The Script
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On:
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Friday 24th June 2011
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At:
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Coca-Cola Dome (South Africa) [map]
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From:
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8pm
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Cost:
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R246 –R399
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Ticket Info:
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Tickets available from computicket, www.computicket.com/ 0839158000
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More:
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The Script live in SA
94.7 Highveld Stereo and MK announce that the phenomenal Irish band The Script will be performing for the first time ever in South Africa on 24th June at the Coca-Cola Dome Johannesburg and 26th June at Grand Arena, GrandWest Cape Town.
It’s been a rags to riches glory ride, an emotional rollercoaster, an all action, all star blockbuster. Three young Dubliners took on the world with music fashioned from the emotional detritus of their own lives raised up by love of pop, rock, hip hop and soul. In two years they notched up a handful of hit singles including ‘We Cry’, ‘Breakeven’ and ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’. Their 2008 debut album ‘The Script’ went to number one in the UK and Ireland and has sold over 2 million sales world-wide.
Highly passionate, sincere and poetically articulate The Script have fielded numerous requests to write for other artists preferring instead to focus on each other. Having caught the eye of Paul McCartney who personally asked The Script to support him on a series of his American stadium shows. They recently won Best Live Performance at the Meteor Awards (beating their mentors U2) who they have also supported on their stadium shows.
Tour Itinerary
Johannesburg
Friday 24th June 2011
Coca-Cola Dome
Tickets from R246 –R399
Cape Town
Sunday 26th June 2011
Grand Arena, Grandwest Casino and Entertainment World.
Tickets from R246 –R374
Media Partners
94.7 Highveld Stereo (Johannesburg Radio)
MK (National TV)
Another BIG Concerts Experience:
(www.bigconcerts.co.za, or http://twitter/bigconcerts)
It’s been a rags to riches glory ride, an emotional rollercoaster, an all action, all-star
blockbuster. Three young Dubliners took on the world, with music fashioned from
the emotional detritus of their own hard lives raised up by a love of pop, rock, hip
hop and soul. In two years they notched up a handful of hit singles, including ‘We
Cry’, ‘Breakeven’ and ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’. Their 2008 debut album, ‘The
Script’, went to number one in the UK and Ireland, approaching 2 million world
wide sales. They played stadium shows with music heroes U2, Take That and Paul
McCartney. They played a triumphant homecoming set at Ireland’s Oxegen festival
before 78,000 fans and won Best Live Performance at the 2010 Meteor Awards
(beating their mentors U2). And to cap it all, ‘Breakeven’ became one of the slowest
climbers in US pop history, eventually hitting the top of Billboards Adult Pop Song
radio airplay chart after 40 weeks on release. ‘Breakeven’ has sold over 1.7 million
downloads in the US alone.
But that was just the first draft. Now it’s time to write a whole new Script.
The scene is a recording studio in London. Two young Irishmen are listening to
playback. Handsome, dark haired Danny O’Donoghue is The Script’s charismatic
vocalist and keyboard player. Shaven headed Mark Sheehan is their intense,
loquacious guitarist. Third member, friendly but taciturn drummer and multi-
instrumentalist Glen Power is in an adjoining studio, laying down a beat. Danny
and Mark cannot sit still. They are leaping about to the music blasting from huge
speakers, an addictive blend of hip hop rhythms, flowing melodies, sparkling hooks
and emotive, story-spinning lyrics, with Danny’s mellifluous soulful vocals riding high
over huge, anthemic choruses. This is their forthcoming second album, ‘Science And
Faith’, and it is fair to say the band are excited.
“We’ve gone from playing little clubs to doing theatres, festivals and stadiums,” says
Mark. “It’s a little bit shocking to us as new band, playing to these mass audiences.
And we feel we have to touch everybody, hit ever fucker in there.”
“I’m just so excited about this record,” declares Danny. “We are more confident
about our sound, so you really want to fine tune your writing skills. Find the essence
of what we do, songs that mean something, that people would like to sing out loud
at a concert.”
“We’ve had to really think about who we are, what we are, and why it matters,”
continues Mark. “Take all that experience and try and do something positive with it.
We really just want to nail that last album. Put it to the wall.”
“For me, it’s like working out to the point of exhaustion,” continues Danny. “We
come in here and try and give ourselves to the track, emotionally, spiritually,
lyrically, musically, whatever we can give, and then walk out here utterly spent. And
then, job done.”
The studio door flies open, and in bursts drummer Glen. “I’ve nailed that track lads!”
he declares. “Wait til you hear it! I’ve got blisters on my hands!”
The Script are like this all the time, highly passionate, sincere and poetically
articulate, with a tendency to talk over each other in their eagerness to express
themselves. The journey to their new album has been a strange one, with many
twists and turns. Danny and Mark met in their early teens in Dublin, and had a
long struggle for musical recognition, albeit picking up early admirers for their
prodigious songwriting talent in U2. They somehow wound up in the US, working as
songwriters and producers with such R’n’B heroes as Dallas Austin, Teddy Riley and
The Neptunes. A chance encounter with Glen focussed their ideas on making their
own music, and the trio was formed. But in the midst of recording their debut album
in Dublin, both Mark’s mother and Danny’s father passed away, inspiring bittersweet
live favourite ‘The End Where I Begin’. A meteoric rise through the world’s charts
followed but, even at the moment of their greatest triumph, they found themselves
having to keep their pride in check, as their native Ireland sank into a devastating
economic crisis, amongst the hardest hit of European nations following the credit
crunch.
And this is where the new chapter in The Script’s tale really began.
“We were coming back to Dublin victorious, only to be confronted with stark
reality,” recalls Danny. “It’s like you've waited for that great day when you can
say, ‘I've finally made it’ and everyone else is saying, ‘My life has turned to shit’.”
“I actually felt really guilty,” admits Mark. “Meeting my mates who used to tell me I
might need to get a real job to support my family, and buying me a beer when I was
the one who was suffering. The tables have turned quite considerably, and you want
to be a little bit excited and go, ‘oh, man, we just played with McCartney, we just got
to number one,’ but they're going ‘I just lost my job’, or ‘I split up with my wife.”
“What’s going on in Ireland is a microcosm for the rest of the world,” suggests
Danny. “So here we were back in Dublin and there’s a lot of relationships going on
and we're seeing people who have met under money, under the Celtic Tiger, and
they've never known what to do without money. People are getting stripped of
everything, stripped of their jobs and their homes and their furniture, so its going
to back to an old thing of drinking cheap bottles of wine, having dinner on the floor,
nothing but candlelight, and it’s like they are meeting each other for the first time.
But I'm not saying that in a bad sense. Its getting back to reality, you are standing
naked in front of this person. That notion really resonated with us, and we wrote a
song, ‘For The First Time’. I felt like it was something that could be a real flagship, to
set the tone for what we want to talk about, emotionally. And the rest has spun off
from there.”
The songs came thick and fast. ‘Exit Wounds’, about the damage relationships
can wreak. ‘You Won’t Feel A Thing’, about suffering all the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune to protect your most loved ones. ‘Nothing’ about a drunken,
broken hearted phone call to a lost love (“We’ve all been there,” as Danny says).
‘Don’t Change A Thing’ about always leaving the door open for the possible return
of a loved one. And the title track, ‘Science And Faith’, about the primacy of love in
the universal equation. “With all of these subjects, we're always trying to attack at a
level where it’s optimistic,” insists Danny. “We're dealing with complex emotions in
the simplest of ways, that's what we battle with in these songs.”
“On first listen, the subject matter might sound bleak,” says Mark. “But I think being
Irish there is this undertone of hope all the time. It’s about having coping skills to
get over things. With Irish people, no matter how bad things get, you always pick
yourself up and carry on.”
The Script are songwriters of the first order, combining thoughtful, heartfelt lyrics
with lush melodies. They have fielded numerous requests to write for other artists
(including Beyonce and James Blunt), preferring instead to focus on each other. “I
feel, honestly, we are three people who write for us, and we write together, and feel
those songs, internally, as mates,” explains Mark.
“If there was somebody I wanted to write with, I’d probably be in a band with them,”
points out Danny. “I love writing with these ****ers! It’s a challenge. You walk in
here, you better be on the ball, cause these guys are good.”
They still pronounce themselves incredulous that Paul McCartney personally asked
The Script to support him at a series of American stadium shows. “That was pretty
mad, that he loved our songs, he knew them, came and watched us while we were
playing on stage,” says Mark. “He said the reason he picked us was our message is
very humble and honest. We're not preaching, we invite people into our world, and
our experiences, and to relate to us. He felt like we were dealing with important
stuff.”
There can surely be no higher honour for a songwriter than the imprimatur of a
Beatle. But that’s where the Script operate, in the highest realms of pop, easily
accessible yet artistically, emotionally and spiritually resonant. “I don’t see us as
anything other than lads from Dublin,” admits Mark. “I don’t feel like I‘m in some big
band. We come in and we make really heartfelt music. I get to really express myself
in this band. And that’s as far as it goes for me. I’m not trying to change the world.
I’m not trying to heal anybody. I generally find most of these songs are healing
myself because getting them out has certainly helped externalise the feelings. ‘The
End Where I Begin’ is such a poignant song for us, from losing parents, that when we
play it people ask ‘do you feel like your reopening those wounds every night?’ Well,
yeah, I honestly do. I set myself up for that song, I remind myself why it was written
and what it was all about, and then we play it. Yet it’s not tough for me at all. I feel
justified. I feel like I’m actually sharing something that you all relate to. You have all
lost somebody too. You can all understand exactly where this is coming from. And it
feels good to do that.”
“You know what the Script is?” says Danny. “It’s the journey from a feeling of
devastation in the pit of my stomach, for me to be able to think about that, put it
into words, to be able to sing it, a band to play it, for you to hear it, to go to your
brain, to understand it and for you to replicate that same feeling. It’s such an
amazing thing. You couldn’t work it out with a calculator. But that’s what we try
and do.”
“And that’s the pay off,” says Mark. “The thought of some person somewhere
sitting in their apartment putting our music on because they are hurting and we’re
the soundtrack to that emotion, whatever is going on in their life. That to me is the
greatest power of music. And I cannot get over that they might choose our record.
Cause I do that. I sit in a room and pick out a song to articulate my feelings. It floors
me every time.”
Get ready for the return of The Script. There are going to be more twists in this tale
before it is done.
SUPPORTED BY THE ARROWS, LIVE IN SOUTH AFRICA
The feisty, focused and incredibly talented pop act The Arrows have been chosen to open for The Script, who will be performing for the first time ever in South Africa on 24th June at the Coca-Cola Dome Johannesburg and 26th June at Grand Arena, GrandWest Cape Town. Presented by 94.7 Highveld Stereo, 94.5 KFM and MK.
Formed in 2006 out of the port city of Durban, The Arrows, first blew up with their smashing debut single “Next Time”, from their self- titled five- track EP in 2007. The two-piece powerhouse have toured the United States four times in the last 2 years and have worked with American heavyweight producer Tim Heintz (Shakatak, Aretha Franklin). In late 2010 “Lovesick”, the hit single from The Arrows’ debut album, was released and racked up nearly 5000 plays across radio station genres, shooting right up the charts. The second single “No Robots” was released in February 2011 and is currently one of the hottest singles on radio. The band also scooped 2 nominations in this years South African Music Awards for the, “Best Pop Album “ for “Make Believe” and Record of the Year for “Lovesick”.
Highly passionate, sincere and poetically articulate The Script have fielded numerous requests to write for other artists preferring instead to focus on each other. Having caught the eye of Paul McCartney, who personally asked The Script to support him on a series of his American stadium shows. They recently won Best Live Performance at the Meteor Awards (beating their mentors U2) who they have also supported on their stadium shows. In two years they notched up a handful of hit singles including ‘We Cry’, ‘Breakeven’ and ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’. Their 2008 debut album ‘The Script’ went to number one in the UK and Ireland and has sold over 2 million sales world-wide.
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Flyer:
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Region:
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South Africa/Johannesburg
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Music:
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Pop. Hip Hop. Soul. Rock.
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DJ's:
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The Script
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