The Script - "Satellites"

The hideous, stripey album cover is because it belongs in jail

Irish Pop Rock group The Script have officially ended their hiatus following the sudden and tragic passing of the group’s co-founder and lead guitarist, Mark Sheehan, in 2023. Originally a trio who released their first album in 2008, the band announced in May of this year that they had picked up longtime touring bassist Benjamin Seargent along with a new lead guitarist, Ben Weaver. As part of the announcement, they stated that trying to return to playing as a trio “would never be the same”.

The band has not released an album since 2019, and it seems reasonable and obvious that the pandemic interrupted their touring and release cycle. Given the timing, I suspect they had already started writing material for this album prior to Sheehan’s death.

If you aren’t immediately familiar with The Script, they are behind several of the biggest radio-ready Pop Rock hits of the late 00s and early 10s, including “For the First Time”, “Breakeven”, and “Hall of Fame”. Their music is light, catchy, and uncomplicated.

Unfortunately, “radio-ready Pop Rock” is really the only descriptor this album needs. As fun as opener “Both Ways” is, it’s basically the only fun I was able to have on this album. There are two reasons for this:

First, broadly, The Script’s sound is, despite their attempts to keep up, stuck in the early 2010s. On the bright side, this means you can listen to their music and remember a world where the Dollar Menu still existed and the “skibidi” did not.

Those were good years.

However, while I might pine for the “good ol’ days” while waiting in line for my prescriptions, I am so tired of this style of pop rock. The kind that has an actual drummer but still uses clap tracks.

Oh. Speaking of — allow me to segue into my second, more specific reason:

Track two on the album: “Unsaid”. Not only is it a song with a clap track played alongside (and at points, in place of) the band’s actual drums, but the song’s content is exemplary the worst sort of patriarchal double-standard embodied by well-meaning ignorance. See below snippets of the first verse and chorus:

Never thought I was the jealous type
But now I'm thinkin' about your last time
The less I know, the less it hurts
But the more I think it just gets worse

. . .

A war between my heart and head
That I just wanna put to rest
I've been up all night losing sleep
Imagining the worst part of your history
Do I let it off my chest
Or just leave it all unsaid?

For anybody living in the 2020s, a man worrying himself sick over his partner’s previous lovers is a huge red flag. It’s not cute. It’s not ‘awwww, he’s jealous’. It’s just diet misogyny; a remnant from the era of women having premarital sex making them unmarriageable.

The worst part is that the speaker — and, by extension, the band — knows. He wouldn’t hesitate, otherwise, right?

Frankly, it sours the rest of the album — which, genuinely, isn’t awful, just stale. Removing “Unsaid” as part of the listen, there are some decent tracks, including “Home Is Where the Hurt Is”, which would play directly after “Unsaid” on a typical, straight listen.

Satellites isn’t the worst thing I’ve heard this year. There are at least four albums below it, but I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth, regardless.

Rating: Orange