If it was a choice between The Script or silence, I’d let the wind whistle between my ears
Last Friday Team Culch settled into a three hour drive to Sligo for a music festival and I found myself with a grá for a bit of tra. Epic levels of tra. Christy Moore levels of tra. McGrattan’s bar had an 90s night the other week to celebrate their 21st birthday and Italia 90 was queued up for the big screen, which put Joxer Goes to Stuttgart in mind and nothing would do but to hear it, it and Delerium Tremens and … Ordinary Man.
Ordinary Man, you see, is about losing your job and trying to provide and all of those things that are the front of everyone’s mind this past while. The idea that Christy Moore was due a resurgence in popularity swung through my mind, and then I had a horrifying thought.
I was recently invited to The Script and I cried off with the excuse ‘Nooo, they’re a bit Dido.’ Dido is a noun that means everything you do is the same. It’s the Groundhog Day of musicianship. Only, horrors, are The Script, despite their Dido ways, this generation’s Christy Moore?
Meh
I don’t understand why people like The Script.
A few years ago, when my writing was still at the dot wordpress dot com incarnation of a personal blog, I dedicated an entire post to comprehensively mocking the lyrics of The Man Who Can’t Be Moved. I questioned the wisdom of waiting for your lost love in the place where you first met, presuming at the time, as I still do, that if she wanted to speak to you she’d probably give you a ring. The entire outpouring of scathe went a little something like:
“A surface reading of the lyrics of The Man Who Can’t Be Moved should be enough to induce fits of laughter in anyone, but i added notes…
Going back to the corner where I first saw you,
Gonna camp in my sleeping bag. I’m not gonna move,
Yeah you read that right. Homelessness is the new cure for
heartache.
Got some words on cardboard got your picture in my hand,
She’s not missing dude - she left you
Saying if you see this girl can you tell her where I am,
If you see that girl, tell her she was right to break up
with freak boy…
Some try to hand me money they don’t understand,
I’m not… broke I’m just a broken hearted man,
Maybe they could hand you some sense. You don’t have
any of that.
I know it makes no sense, but what else can I do,
How can I move on when I’ve been in love with you…
Perhaps you could try not relocating to the street
in a massive display of over-reaction.
Cos if one day you wake up and find that you’re missing me,
Doubtful.
And your heart starts to wonder where on this earth I can be,
Her heart is doing the happy dance of freedom.
Thinking maybe you’d come back here to the place that we’d meet,
And you’d see me waiting for you on the corner of the street.
Oh dear, someday a Guard will tell you to Move On and you’ll get
it on an emotional level and realise what a complete spa-face you’re
being.
So I’m not moving…
I’m not moving.
Gotcha.
Policeman says son you can’t stay here,
I said there’s someone I’m waiting for if it’s a day, a month, a year,
Or right….I didn’t know this lyric was coming up. See
what I said about the guards?
Gotta stand my ground even if it rains or snows,
If she changes her mind this is the first place she will go.
Oh really? She wouldn’t call by your house? Ring you? Text you?
Yeah, I often try to contact people by dropping by where I first
met them.
People talk about the guy
Who’s waiting on a girl…
Well yeah, who wouldn’t talk about the
volunteer bum?
Oohoohwoo
There are no holes in his shoes
But a big hole in his world…
Hmmmm
Deep.
Maybe I’ll get famous as man who can’t be moved,
That’s what you want to be famous for.
And maybe you won’t mean to but you’ll see me on the news,
Or, y’know, on the side of a milk carton. Have you told
your family what you’re doing?
And you’ll come running to the corner…
Cos you’ll know it’s just for you
Nope, she won’t. Loser.”
In the intervening time since I first wrote that, I grew a conscience. I considered that I was insulting somebody’s art, their outpouring of emotion. I considered that I have many times written utter trash that people have been kind enough not to make mock of. I resolved to keep my scathing opinions to myself.
And then that gem For the First Time was released and if there’s one thing I hate it’s a song that tells a story about something never experienced.
She needs me now but I can’t seem to find a time
I’ve got a new job now in the unemployment line
And we don’t know how we got into this mess is it God’s test
Someone help us cause we’re doing our best
You what now? If you were a blog post you’d be link-baiting. You can’t just pick society’s biggest current theme and write a song to be populist and have everyone love it.
Only, turns out you actually can and oh how it grates.
She’s in line at the door with her head held high
While I just lost my job but didn’t lose my pride
But we don’t know how we’re gonna make it work when it hurts
When you pick yourself up you get kicked in the dirt
Grrr. It’s just so bloody twee.
I worry that people buy into this stuff, and yet, and yet, there is no way I could resist listening to a mash up of For the First Time and Ordinary Man if such a thing existed.
Ostensibly I would like to be told what’s so great about The Script, because no matter how much I dislike them they sell vulgar amounts of music but mostly, if we’re honest, I would love it everyone said ‘yeah you’re dead right’ so I can stop feeling bad about the unpleasant level of meh they bring out in me whenever they’re on the airwaves.
The Script: voice of a generation or vice of a generation? Personally I’m morto for them.
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Know of The Script, if none of their stuff, but ‘For The First Time’ sounds plain silly and wee bit condescending. While ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’ sounds utterly daft and slightly creepy. Great post!
I HATE The Script, I can’t quite put my finger on why but the lead singer has one of those stupid faces that annoys me and their music is redundant. Pure shite!
I’m absolutely morto for them as well. I’ve been a member of Team Boo To The Script for a long time now, and with every release my displeasure with them grows. They’re so derivative. My friends and I had a mock sing-song of The Script where we did the 4 chord song and tried to sing as many of their songs as possible. Pretty sure we made it through at least all of their hits.
I’ve had discussions about it with people where their only argument was either “the lead singer is so HOT, omg” or “but the lyrics are so emotional”. When, in fact, they’re mostly stalkerish or puke-inducing. So, yeah. Boo to them. Scarlet for their ma’s.