SUPPORTING THE MOTION: James Hunter, pseudonym
It’s my unfortunate fate to have to argue in support of The Script, a stance that, especially amongst the vast majority of Ireland’s music scene, is a very unpopular stance to take. Given alternative music’s prerogative to be against anything ‘popular’, this doesn’t come as a surprise and with The Script’s Danny O’ Donoghue making comments as to the validity of Jarvis Cocker’s existence in pop music, being anti-Script is the thing to do in the Irish music media nowadays. However, it is my charge to try and address the balance in the discussion in this all too brief article.
In a discussion like this, you can’t argue about musical tastes. An argument like that, an argument so personal, is an argument that can never be decided using reason, so we can’t discuss whether the music The Script make is good, and I for one, am not a fan. But what this discussion has to be about, is how The Script have carved themselves a position at the top of the charts through their musical abilities, a feat that no ex-boyband can lay claim to. Not even JT.
Let’s look at their history. Many of us have seen the infamous, My Town, video (circa 1996) featuring the band’s Danny O’ Donoghue and Mark Sheehan. Their success as a boy-band was overshadowed by other, more popular acts and the band weren’t destined to stay in that mould for long. They achieved enough recognition however to be able to work with some of Pop’s most influential producers, Dallas Austin (Michael Jackson, Madonna), Montell Jordan, and Teddy Riley amongst others . After years of working with prominent producers in Canada and Los Angeles, Danny, Mark, and drummer Glen Power formed The Script in 2005, and released their debut album in 2008. The rest is history.
A total of 12 years passed between My Town and the first Script release, which you must note, is a very long time. The evolution of music is so fast, especially in pop music, that the relevance of My Town has been quite rightly forgotten and is barely relevant to the band’s current state. That said, they likelihood is that The Man Who Can’t Be Moved will not be quite so relevant in another 12 years, but it can’t be denied that The Script have suffered in the mire of terrible pop music in their time. Now however, through their own skill and talents, they have finally carved themselves out a position of credibility in the pop world and that’s something to be respected.
OPPOSING THE MOTION: Caroline O’Donoghue, bloggist
I am a woman. Furthermore, I am an Irish woman. This means that I have two divinely ordained cultural responsibilities. One: I must have lots of babies. Two: I must fancy Danny O’Donoghue of The Script. On both these counts, I have failed miserably.
I don’t know which came first, my hatred of The Script or my somewhat confusing hatred of Danny O’Donoghue, but both hatreds are equal in their vitality. My working theory is that everything about The Script is so wrapped up in O’Donoghue that it is virtually impossible to accept them as being anything more than a somewhat less musically interesting Take That.
For one thing, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Script song or seen a shred of Script publicity that didn’t focus entirely on the innate fanciability of Danny O’Donoghue. The band’s official website is an invariably tragic reflection on this, featuring the most mortifying description of any human being, ever: “Raven haired, handsome, sensitive keyboard player with the vocal flexibility and technical range of an American soul legend”. (It goes on for a bit like this, just failing to mention “glitters in sunlight”.)
I suppose none of this is really surprising, considering that O’Donoghue and fellow bandmate Mark Sheehan first found relative (cough) success as nineties boy band Mytown, whose first video, the soulfully titled Party All Night can still be found on Youtube. (If you’re not bothered looking it up, let me surmise: spiked hair, cheerleaders, and the theme tune to California Dreams) Considering his humble boy band beginnings, it’s inevitable that poor old Danny has been exploited for his looks and not his… well, whatever it is he’s got going on.
I’m ranting a bit now, and I’m all too aware that if I continue picking on the irritating cult of fancying Danny O’Donoghue, I’m in danger of being left open to accusations of being either a) a lesbian or b) an embittered cow who has become resentful of the lack of Danny O’Donoghue’s in her area code. Thankfully, I don’t have to rely solely on this argument because the music of The Script has the good grace of being quite genuinely awful.
Musically, The Script have one pace, and two themes.
Theme Number One: “There’s this girl. She’s gone and left me. I know, right? Me. I am miffed about this. Rather than tell you why this girl warrants being miffed about, I am instead going to bang on for three minutes about the very notion that someone could leave me. Me. Danny O’Donoghue. I mean, seriously.” (See “Break Even”, “If You Ever Come Back”, “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” and well… everything, really.)
Theme Number Two: “Life is a bit crap sometimes, isn’t it? Some people don’t reach their full potential, and that sucks for them. Also, I’ve been reading the news lately and I hear there’s some stuff going on.” (See “We Cry” and “For the First Time”)
For the First Time itself is enough to give you an aneurism for being the single most patronising song since The Coronas conception of the skin-crawling San Diego Song. While The Coronas utilized what it was to be a smug University student ferociously chasing the dream of sleeping all day and drinking all night, The Script did something a little different.
The Script decided that as the spearheads of Irish pop music, it was their responsibility to write the first pop song about the economic recession. They decided it should sound something like a Bruce Springsteen song, preferably something like “The River”, only with more bounce. And that’s how For the First Time happened: how thousands of job losses, the collapse of the housing market and perpetual national anxiety was deftly surmised by “Man, these times are hard” and rhyming “I’ve got a new job now, in the unemployment line” with “cheap bottles of wine”.
Maybe I’m the only person who’s pissed off by this, and perhaps my venom toward The Script is emblematic of a wider resentment toward the reductive songwriting emerging from the Irish music scene. The last time Ireland was hit by a blow this hard, we were also struck by a wave of punk, ska, and the new romantics. Now, we have The Script smouldering their way into teenage fantasies and, for some reason, musical legitimacy.
Published on Drop-D.ie, 12th April, 2011
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