Music is a universal language. Yet with all the bands out there, it can be hard to find a group that tells a story and writes lyrics that can be understood by most everyone.
For the music lover looking for one of the rare exceptions, it's worth taking note of the up-and-coming Irish band, The Script.
"Our forte is our storytelling," said 27-year-old lead singer Danny O'Donoghue. "We have been getting a pat on the back from people for singing about normal things, like heartbreak, tragedy and triumph."
"The Script" comes to the House of Blues in Boston on Friday, Dec. 4 — a stop on their U.S. tour.
The Script is a trio comprised of O'Donoghue, Mark Sheehan on lead guitar and Glenn Power on drums. Sheehan and O'Donoghue met at an early age in Ireland and moved to America when they were teenagers, to play music and work with producers and songwriters.
During the summer of 2005, they met Power and had a jam session. And from that session their very first song, "Before the Worst," was born.
O'Donoghue and Sheehan grew up listening to rock bands like U2.
"In Ireland, growing up you were either a rock producer or nothing," O'Donoghue said. "Growing up in the shadow of U2, ya know, Bono is a small, short guy, but he casts a long shadow and it's very hard in Ireland to step out from behind that."
When they came to America to study R&B and hip-hop, they thought they would become incredibly successful fast, he said. In reality, it would be another eight years before that began to happen.
O'Donoghue and Sheehan were good friends with a U2 manager and he opened a few doors for them.
"He said, 'You're either gonna sink or swim. You'll either flourish or come home with your tail between your legs,'" O'Donaghue recalled.
While the band's fan base grew in the United Kingdom, it was from doing guest spots on television shows and writing music for commercials in the United States that got them recognized on the other side of the pond.
"We didn't realize the power of our music," O'Donoghue said.
With the release of their debut self-titled recording, "The Script," in Ireland in August 2008 and then in the United States in March 2009, songs such as "We Cry" proved to band members that "no matter where in the world you go, there are people who know someone just like that song is describing."
"Our music seemed to be not just a Dublin or an Irish thing," O'Donoghue said. "It seemed to be picking up and left a resonance in people. I think people see themselves or people they know in our music."
Sheehan is from James Street in Dublin —a rough area, O'Donoghue said.
"The mentality of the people down there, no matter if they have no money or anything else, they were sharp, witty. They were storytellers and they were real salt-of-the-earth people," he said.
"We Cry" is about James Street. It harkens back to the many years Sheehan spent walking up and down that street, seeing kids pushing prams when they should have been in school. It's about stepping over junkies, and realizing you are stepping over a junkie who used to be a friend of yours, or a musician who used to be on the list for high success, O'Donoghue said.
Nowadays, The Script is selling out shows at most every venue in the United States.
"It seems like everybody knows every lyric to every song at every show," he said. "You have these words that you wrote at your darkest time, in your darkest hour, in some bedroom late at night in Dublin; and to have four or five thousand people singing the words, knowing the songs still resonate all the way on the other side of the world. It's a moment when the hair on the back of your neck stands up. It's a magic moment."
IF YOU GO
Who: The Script
When: Friday, Dec. 4, 8 p.m.
Where: House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston.
How: Tickets are $20 general admission standing room; $29, reserved seating.Call 1-888-693-2583 or visit www.houseofblues.com.
