It’s never easy for a band to continue after the death of a founding member, especially if, as in the case of The Script, you have been solid friends from the age of 12. After the death of Mark Sheehan in April 2023, there was, according to the Dublin band’s lead singer Danny O’Donoghue, “a big call for us not to do anything”. That wasn’t going to happen. “We built this together, and for me to now tear it down because Mark’s not here? That’s an insult to his memory. Better to carry on the thing we’ve built together.”
Satellites, the band’s seventh studio album, is more than just carrying on, however. It is a collection of songs with emotional depth and purpose, shouldered with no small responsibility by O’Donoghue and Glen Power (and ably assisted by a few co-writers).
The album begins with Both Ways, a track written with Steve Robson and Wayne Hector, two UK songwriters with vast experience working with multimillion-selling acts. The result of such blending is quite unlike what you might expect from The Script, a sonic sleight of hand that brings to mind Bruno Mars feasting on Black Eyed Peas. It’s a reminder that O’Donoghue (not to mention Sheehan) cut his songwriting teeth in Canada and Los Angeles in the late 1990s, writing and producing songs for the likes of TLC, Boyz II Men and Britney Spears.
Home Is Where the Hurt Is, Inside Out, One Thing I Got Right, and Gone (the latter written by O’Donoghue to reference the loss of Sheehan with the lines “like a shooting star across the sky, in a second you were gone”) bring us to more familiar territory, with signature arena-friendly pop-rock styles, but the beating heart of the album resides in the ballads At Your Feet, the title track, Before You Go, and Promises.
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Business as usual? Not all the time. What we are well accustomed to is underscored here by a genuine sense of loss and something authentically rewritten.
