Born in Dublin in 1980, Danny O’Donoghue joined Irish boyband Mytown in 1996. After some success in their home nation, they split in 2001. O’Donoghue and fellow band member Mark Sheehan formed a songwriting and production partnership and moved to Canada, then Los Angeles, where they recruited drummer Glen Powell to form The Script and were signed in 2005. Their 2008 debut, The Script, reached No.1 in the UK and sold over a million copies, the first in a run of hugely successful albums. In 2012, O’Donoghue became a judge on the Voice UK.
In his Letter to My Younger Self, O’Donoghue recalls his early musical inspirations, his time as a reality TV judge and his friendship with Sheehan
I just remember being bored a lot as a teenager. I remember being like, oh god, what can I do today? There were so many instruments around in the house; my brother played guitar, my other brother played bass, my sister sang. So if you were bored, there was a piano in the corner you could go over and play. I remember learning a lot of different things. I learned how to juggle when I was about 15, and I could balance things on my feet. I was like some kind of circus freak with ADHD. I could play a Chopin piece on the piano. I could play the tin whistle with my nose. I was doing a lot of stupid shit as a kid.
I think I had a lot of girls on my walls, like Sandra Bullock, Jet from Gladiators. My idols at the time… I was actually listening to producers and writers, so people like David Foster, who was an incredible producer for people like Whitney Houston and Celine Dion, and Babyface, this amazing soul producer. He was also an artist himself. He wrote for Boyz II Men, Stevie Wonder, Toni Braxton, and he wrote for himself. So I was really into that kind of American singing, the glossy pop that was coming out from over the water.
I was massively surrounded by music as a kid, but my brothers and my dad had been away touring for like three years in a row. My dad was in a very famous Irish band [The Dreams]. And I just remember my mum being very sad over them being gone. So I swore I wasn’t going to do that.
I thought I was going to draw for Marvel Comics. I used to draw all the Marvel cartoons. I think it was around 13 when I really started playing piano and started writing, and found that it was a really good place to put your emotions into.
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Danny O’Donoghue with his dad, Shay, in the early 1990s
When I got signed at 16 we [O’Donoghue and late bandmate Mark Sheehan] went over to America for a few years. It didn’t really work out, so we were left in this precarious position where it was like… we could come back to Ireland with our tail between our legs, or try and make something of ourselves. So we took the money that we had left over from the record deal, bought some equipment, and ended up trying to write over there. We had a friend who knew Justin Timberlake, and we ended up doing a remix for him that got us noticed by a publishing company over there. So that was the start of our musical story.
I lived in the States for about 10 years. So I was 27 or 28 when we started The Script, which is really, really late for a pop band. It was our last attempt. I remember feeling quite insecure, like this really is our one last chance at it, and if it doesn’t work out, then I suppose we’d have to get proper jobs and enter back into regular society again, which I fought so hard to stay away from.
I’ve heard people say how much energy I had then. I was always just like a Labrador, basically. What are we doing today? Oh, cool. Come on, let’s go. I’m going to carry all this gear, and we’re going to go do a show. Can I help? I was so eager to please. I’m quite jealous of younger me because of his fearlessness. I mean, I still have it, but over the years, criticism can stop you from being as fearless, trying absolutely everything you want to try. And after a while, when you’re in a band, people expect a certain thing from you. So artistically you have to play into that a little bit.
You can’t suddenly go like, ‘OK, I’m going to be a DJ’, or put on a different hat, or say, ‘Screw this, I’m going to just do visual art’. People have a preconceived idea of what your art is. But I remember just doing anything and everything I loved when I was a kid.
I’d like to go back and tell my 16-year-old self it all worked out. But I think he would be confident that what he was thinking back then would actually come true. That’s the power of positive thinking. I’ve always believed in myself. I’ve always said something’s going to happen. People ask, did you know that you were going to do all this? And not one word of a lie, I did know. I’ve always been like, it doesn’t matter if I don’t get paid now, or I’m going to starve for the next few weeks, I know this is going to work out. Call it blind belief.
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Mark and I got the record contract and we wrote songs for my solo project. Mark had produced it and managed it a little bit. I had five songs, so we were going to shop me around as a solo artist. Mark sent them off to a friend of ours, Steve Kipner, and he was like, ‘Oh, we love the sound of this, this is awesome. And what are you, solo or a band?’ And we said, it’s a band. And they wanted to sign us. Mark didn’t even want to be in the group at the time, he had to be convinced. We approached Glen [Power] to be our drummer and that was it, The Script was born.
Danny O’Donoghue with bandmates Mark Sheehan (left) and Glen Power. Image: Katja Ogrin / Alamy
I was quite naive about the industry. I always thought that if you’re talented enough and the song’s good enough, the world will open the gates for you, and everybody will want to hear it. I didn’t realise that you could have so many talented people and so many great songs out there, but unless you have half a million pounds injected by a label, it’s very hard to get to every person up and down the UK and Ireland. I was naive about the fact that it’s a music business and people want to make money off what you do. So that was a big misconception for me but slowly but surely I realised.
I deliberated about being a coach on The Voice. I was totally fine with the jokes on the show about people not knowing me, because here’s the truth, people actually didn’t know who I was. But the show had done wonders for anybody else who’d been on it, particularly in America. Obviously, you have the full might of the BBC and their promo department behind you. So we were like, that’s a no-brainer really. As long as the band knew that I’m not going solo. I split all my money I got with them of course. We split everything three ways, even publishing, including with people who weren’t writing songs.
Being a frontman you get, you know, girls, and you get really nice tables at restaurants, and you get to fly around the world. It’s really, really difficult. No really, what an honour to be able to stand up on stage and perform these songs in front of people.
Danny O’Donoghue and The Script play The Dog and Truck in Whitechapel. Image: Sipa US / Alamy
I asked myself a few questions when Mark died [Sheehan died in 2023 aged 46 of an undisclosed illness]. You know, do you continue? What do you do? You can’t really stop, because what would you do if you stopped? And there’s so many people who rely on us for work. And I still love it. I still love writing. I think there’s plenty more wind in the sails.
I’ve always been religious. But I started to become more spiritual and get back to God [O’Donoghue started going to mass every day after Sheehan’s death]. How are you going to talk to the dead people? You’ve got to get into the church. No, I was just looking for something, spiritual guidance, I guess. In interviews I’m asked about Mark a lot, I’m constantly reminded of him, but I think just dealing with it on a day-to-day basis is the best way you can go.
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If I could relive one day it would be my wedding day last year. Just seeing my wife walking down the aisle. It was just a fantastic celebration of love.
