Why Filipinos still sing their hearts out to The Script
For The Script, the Irish and Filipino people are like “brothers from another mother.” It’s kind of strange, lead vocalist Danny O’Donoghue says, how two nations thousands of miles apart can have so much in common. “Both are super kind and really, really welcoming. We love music, we love drinking, we love heartbreak, and we love karaoke.”
Emphasis on the drinking, heartbreak, and karaoke.
Feels like home
Many of The Script’s greatest hits nail that tear-in-your-beer, post-breakup vibe. And true enough, sometime in the late 2000s and early 2010s (or until now, frankly), you couldn’t walk into a videoke bar without seeing at least one person—bottle of beer in hand—wailing out “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” or “Breakeven” to drown their sorrows.
After all, O’Donoghue says, singing is just “crying in tune.” Or out of it.
Heck, they even have a song called “Nothing,” about a drunk man calling his ex-girlfriend to confess he’s still in love with her. And when you factor in Filipinos’ fondness for the melodramatic—or their penchant to treat heartbreak as a coping mechanism—the band’s enduring appeal starts to make sense.
The love goes both ways. The Script first held court in the Philippines in 2011, and every one of their five returns since has “felt like coming home.” Yes, the fans have always been active online, sending him recipes for Filipino dishes in his DMs, urging him to perform in cities outside Manila, or telling him to visit the beaches.
“But the real connection is when you’re here, onstage, and seeing what our music means over here,” O’Donoghue says.
Seventh outing
And that’s why The Script isn’t stopping at concert number six. On March 18, 2027, the group will bring their “Man in the Arena” tour to the SM Mall of Asia Arena for yet another night of rock anthems and impassioned sing-alongs.
“We have had such an amazing relationship with the Philippines,” he says. “For a small country, you guys are actually our biggest fanbase… It’s a big honor but also a big responsibility.”
But is there still anything new to see in this seventh outing? The hits are a given. There will be the usual stroll through the audience and, surely, the long-running tradition of calling and serenading someone’s ex over the phone.
For starters, there will be new music. The band is set to release their eighth album, “The User’s Guide to Being Human,” which features “Living Our Life Without Me”—a song that O’Donoghue says is a continuation of “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved.” So if you’re keen on finding out what became of the man “on the corner of the street”—and hearing it play out live—then this next concert might be worth showing up for. “Because I’m not spoiling the story!” he says.
Light in the dark
There’s also a newfound sense of optimism in the new album—something the band lost for a time after founding guitarist and longtime friend Mark Sheehan died in 2023. “I haven’t been this excited in ages… In our last album (‘Satellites’), we wrote in hopes of getting through losing Mark, which was a massive blow to us all,” O’Donoghue says.
“Grief is something you never lose, but grow around. I have done the growing around it,” he adds. “I’m finally starting to see a little bit of light in the darkness we were in.”
The new album is also an attempt to capture the full spectrum of human experiences. There are songs about depression, substance abuse, and heartbreak, but also about love and healing. “You can take the collection anywhere to give anyone an idea of what it feels like to be human,” O’Donoghue says.
More than just new music, O’Donoghue says the band also plans to mount a show that better integrates visuals and music through mini-films and microdramas to make the performances feel like live music videos.
A crazy place to be
Still, perhaps the biggest change is how the band has grown. They’re older, hopefully wiser. O’Donoghue no longer writes like a teenager going through everything with nothing, or like a rising act dealing with the traps and trappings of fame. He’s now married and no longer that brokenhearted man “falling to pieces.”
And these days, he writes music from a different, although not totally detached, perspective.
“I have moved on to a different world, but I can still look back on the old songs fondly—with the wisdom and perspective you gain as you grow older,” he says.
Not that he has it all figured out. If anything, there are even more things to figure out now. If his 20s were spent drowning, his mid-40s have him treading water all over again—only now, there’s even more being thrown at him. There’s AI and the ever-changing music landscape—and “it’s a crazy place to be,” he says.
“But as long as you keep writing from a place of truth, that’s where it’s at, good or bad,” adds the singer, who no longer feels burdened by the pressure to replicate the success of the band’s earlier work.
“Because the old hits have stayed around for so long, you sometimes wonder if the new songs are as good as the old ones. It can be a blessing and a curse. But at the end of the day, to have even just one song that people remember is incredible.”
Settling down
The natural next step in O’Donoghue’s life is to settle down, have children, and “cultivate a village” he hopes to raise them in. That, he says, could very well become the subject of the next album.
Safe to say, there may not be many more beer-drenched heartbreak songs in the foreseeable future. At least, not unless he gets divorced, he jokes—in which case, he will have plenty of new material for people to sing and drink to.
“Who knows?” he says, laughing. But hopefully, that’s not in the script.
