The Script

Mytown, Los Angeles, and the long way back to Dublin

Danny O'Donoghue and Mark Sheehan met as children in Dublin and spent the back half of the 1990s in Mytown, a boy band formed in 1996 that never found an audience. What came after mattered more. The pair moved to Los Angeles and worked as jobbing writers and producers, picking up credits in the orbit of Britney Spears, Boyz II Men and TLC and sessions alongside Dallas Austin, Montell Jordan and Teddy Riley. A record deal fell through and they went home.

Around 2001 they started again in Dublin with the drummer Glen Power, and called the group The Script. Phonogenic signed them in 2005; RCA picked them up internationally in 2008. The American apprenticeship left a fingerprint that still separates them from the British guitar bands they were filed next to — the rhythm tracks sit nearer R&B than rock, and O'Donoghue sings in a half-spoken, conversational register that came out of writing songs for other people to perform.

Four number ones and a song that would not stop

The self-titled debut arrived in 2008 and went to number one in both Britain and Ireland. So did Science & Faith in 2010, #3 in 2012 and No Sound Without Silence in 2014 — four consecutive chart-toppers in two countries, which remains the spine of the catalogue.

The commercial high-water mark was 'Hall of Fame', the will.i.am collaboration lifted from #3, which reached number one in the UK, Ireland and Scotland and is still their highest-charting single worldwide. The slower, more useful work was done by 'Breakeven', 'The Man Who Can't Be Moved' and 'For the First Time', songs that lodged in radio playlists and now function as the fixed points of any set. O'Donoghue's two series as a coach on The Voice UK broadened the band's name recognition well past the record-buying audience. Promoter material for the current tour puts the career totals at six UK number one albums, eight Irish ones, more than fourteen billion streams and around 4.5 million tickets sold.

April 2023, and the decision to carry on as four

Sheehan died on 14 April 2023, aged 46, in hospital after a brief illness. He had co-written almost everything the band had released and played lead guitar on all of it. The surviving members concluded that continuing as a trio would never be the same, and instead expanded: Benjamin Sargeant, long part of the touring setup, was made a full member in 2024 on bass, and Ben Weaver came in on lead guitar.

Satellites, released in August 2024, was the first record made without Sheehan, and the Satellites World Tour carried it through 2024 and 2025 across Europe, Australia and south-east Asia. On that run the grief was handled in the open rather than in the programme notes. Reviewing the Perth show on 5 February 2025, a roughly ninety-minute set, one writer singled out 'If You Could See Me Now' dedicated to Sheehan, with O'Donoghue telling the crowd that the band could never be rid of the grief, they just crawl around it. A guest vocalist joined them for 'Breakeven' the same night.

The User's Guide To Being Human

The eighth album was recorded in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles, and released on 14 August 2026 through BMG. O'Donoghue has said he was back in the studio within a week of the Satellites tour finishing, and that sobriety changed how he approached writing. The sessions reunited him with Andrew Frampton, Steve Kipner and Jimbo Barry, the collaborators behind 'Breakeven', 'The Man Who Can't Be Moved' and 'Hall of Fame' — a deliberate return to the machinery that built the band's sound with Sheehan rather than a move away from it.

Eleven tracks, led by 'Man in the Arena', with 'The Crowd Was Singing Wonderwall', 'After We're Gone', 'I'm 100 Different People', 'Grow Old with Grace' and the title song among them. O'Donoghue's own framing is blunt: the title is what the album is about, something to remind a listener of the spectrum of feelings that make a person human. Reviewing it for When The Horn Blows, Danielle Holian read it as reaffirmation rather than reinvention — polished, expansive and unapologetically emotional, written for rooms of several thousand people, with the band driving further into its own lane rather than abandoning it.

It entered the Official Albums Chart at number three on 27 August 2026, having peaked at two on the midweek update, and went to number one on the Official Irish Albums Chart.

Standing, October 2026

The last twelve months have been spent mostly on other bands' stages, by design. The Script were very special guests across fifteen UK stadium dates on Take That's Circus Live summer 2026 run, playing London Stadium on 25 June and Manchester's Etihad Stadium on 1 July, with Belinda Carlisle also on those bills. In July they joined the European leg of Luke Combs's My Kinda Saturday Night Tour, including both Slane Castle shows on 18 and 19 July, and played Amsterdam's Johan Cruijff ArenA on 11 July and Timișoara on 1 August. Their most recent documented show was BBC Radio 2 in the Park at City Park, Stirling, on 12 September 2026 — the first time that festival had gone to Scotland.

The headline run was announced in May, with general tickets on sale from 9.30am on 29 May 2026 and a pre-order pre-sale two days earlier. It opens with two nights at Dublin's 3Arena on 30 and 31 October, then thirteen UK arenas through November: Belfast on the 2nd, Newcastle, Birmingham, Manchester's Co-op Live, Nottingham, Leeds, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Sheffield, Bournemouth, Cardiff and Liverpool, finishing at the O2 in London on 21 November. James Morrison is special guest on the UK dates. Mainland Europe follows — Munich on 23 November, Düsseldorf, two nights at Amsterdam's Ziggo Dome and Antwerp on the 28th — then Etihad Park in Abu Dhabi on 6 December, three nights in Pasay City in March 2027, and Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore to the end of that month.

What the sets have looked like this year

The 2026 shows so far have been support and festival slots, and the band have treated them as shop windows. At London Stadium on 25 June they had forty minutes, 7.20pm to 8.00pm, and used them for eight songs: 'Superheroes', 'Rain', 'Man in the Arena', 'Nothing' — during which O'Donoghue walked out into the standing crowd, as he has done for years — 'The Man Who Can't Be Moved', 'For the First Time', 'Breakeven' and 'Hall of Fame'. The Manchester and Coventry sets ran to the same shape, with the new single third.

Stirling got nine songs in forty-five minutes on 12 September, with 'The Crowd Was Singing Wonderwall' slotted in third and two tracks from the new album aired. Bring The Noise gave it eight out of ten, noting the number of band T-shirts in the field and that O'Donoghue was carrying vocals, rhythm guitar and keyboards himself. The Scotsman and Scottish Music Network both listed the band among the day's high points. O'Donoghue's stage address was straightforward rather than scripted: it had been a while since they were last in the country, and there was a sense of community in the field.