How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Danny O’Donoghue - ‘Lean into every feeling’

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Danny O’Donoghue is best known as the lead singer of The Script and a former  coach on singing talent show The Voice. But the last year of his life has been overshadowed by personal tragedy: the death of his bandmate and best friend Mark Sheehan at the age of 46.  In his first full-length interview since Mark’s death, Danny opens up about how he navigated grief, how he spiralled into alcohol abuse and how he managed to find a way to survive through therapy and faith.  It’s an extraordinary story, movingly told with great profundity.  Danny’s failures include failing music in school and dropping out (he was finally diagnosed with Dyslexia earlier this year), the failure of his first record deal and failing to look after himself physically and spiritually as an adult.  Thank you, Danny, for being so open and for your willingness to show a vulnerability that I know will help many others who are struggling with loss. As always, I’m desperate to hear about your failures. Every week, my guest and I choose a selection to read out and answer on our special subscription offering, Failing with Friends. We’ll endeavour to give you advice, wisdom, some laughs and much, much more.  Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com  Production & Post Production Manager: Lily Hambly   Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Tickell and Josh Gibbs Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh hey there, I'm Louis Vartel. And I'm Ira Madison III. As two gay men living in two very gay cities were contractually obligated to be experts on pop culture. Yes, I had to name five Kylie Minogue tracks just to get a lease. Every week on our show, Keep It, we scrutinize each new pop culture headline with the intensity of Zendaya watching a tennis match. Juicy celebrity gossip?

Check. Audist reviews of new music releases? Come at us, Swifties. Make it a brat summer with new episodes of Keep It every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. ["Keep It Up"] Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This podcast puts failure

in the spotlight and asks us what we learn from the moments in life that don't go according to plan. Because I firmly believe that most failure can teach us something if we let it. I just wanted to remind you that for the first time ever How to Fail is going on tour and will be presented by HeyU, the home of reality TV. Each show, I'll have a very special guest sharing their three failures on stage, so you can expect the usual uplifting, hilarious and moving conversations. Tickets are on sale now.

Head to fein.co.uk or follow the link in the show notes. You can join me for more how to fail in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Every week I get some extra time with my guests to answer your failures and questions. This week you'll hear more from Danny O'Donoghue. The one thing that I can say is there is good in every situation. And that's the hardest thing to think of at the time when you're surrounded by negative thoughts, everything else. But if it's not in the moment, you find the wisdom definitely in retrospect, looking back you do. And we'd love to hear from you. Just follow the link in the podcast notes. Danny O'Donoghue is a singer-songwriter best known for being the frontman of the Irish band The Script and a coach on the first two series of singing talent show The Voice.

He was born and raised in Dublin, the youngest of six children. Although his father was a musician, O'Donoghue was at first determined to pursue a different career, but he ended up dropping out of school to start a band with his best friend Mark Sheehan. Their first band was called My Town and had modest success. For 10 years O'Donoghue and Sheehan lived in LA writing songs for other artists including Britney Spears and TLC. They teamed up with a drummer and eventually returned to Ireland to record their first album as The Script. Ireland to record their first album as The Script. The band have six UK number one albums, six billion streams and 11 million album sales to their name. But it hasn't been easy. Last year, Sheehan died at the age of 46 after a brief illness, a shock that was felt with

seismic impact by his family and friends. The script has now reformed as a foursome, and in August released their new album, Satellites. They go on tour in November, for the first time since the death of their beloved bandmate. The name of the new album has particular importance for O'Donoghue. It's taken from one of the last songs he wrote with his best friend before he passed. We're all just bits of dust floating through space, O'Donoghue says. Satellites rise above the earth, and they have a vantage point to look down, and you communicate through satellites as well. So there's a lot of meaning behind it for me.

Danny O'Donoghue, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you. Good to see you after all these years. I know. Well, I said to you when you walked through the studio door that I actually interviewed you when you did your first series of The Voice. Yeah. And I reread that interview recently. It was for the Observer newspaper. And in it, I say he's one of the nicest celebrities I've ever interviewed. So that's a big thing to stand up to. How wrong were you? Yeah, you pulled the wool over my eyes for an hour.

And I've been doing it ever since, yeah. Well, it's lovely to see you again. Thank you. And I'm sorry for what you've been through. I think that's what I want to start off by saying. I can only offer my sincerest condolences. I appreciate that. Thank you. Do you feel, Mark, looking on like a satellite?

Yeah, some days are good, some days are bad. I always feel his presence, but probably more so around promotion or when we're doing public things. It's one thing to grieve to lose a friend, you know, he's my best mate for nearly over 30 years. But then also to do it publicly and then to do it repeatedly. It's just tough, man. It's really tough. But I think the thing that I learned probably this year, more so, is that the more open that I can be personally, I've always tried to be that in my music, like the art form of making music to me is always something that I've said, well, if I bleed on the page and I can talk about my past and my childhood and

stuff, somebody else can associate themselves or see a little bit of themselves in. I grew up in a very musical household. Like you said, my father was a fairly prominent musician in Ireland. So I grew up at the foot of somebody who was expressing himself all the time on the piano. We had a piano. I didn't know what I was doing at the time, but I'd go into a room if someone annoyed me,

I'd go into a room and I'd just scream and sing. As loud and as hard as I could. But what I am realizing now as an adult is, you know, I'm level four now, so I'm like, I'm at a different area in my life. And I realized that almost I'm now turning into that song and turning into an open book where I feel that the more honest I am about myself in scenarios like this and to is the more that I'm helping other people. It's an amazing thing. It's tough to do because you're opening yourself up for everything because you're vulnerable. But I feel like in today's day and age, being vulnerable is a massive asset

and is a big shield that you can almost guard yourself because there's nothing to hide behind. Thank you. And it's how I strive to live my life as well, but I've never heard it so well expressed. And that feeling of letting everything in, every emotion in, and understanding, as Rilke said, no feeling is final, but you have to feel it in order to create the art. And I think that that's what you clearly do so beautifully. I feel like art is the only justification that there is for pain. The reason why I went to music in the first place, not even words, when I was just making sounds, I used to perceive any slight that came towards me because I was just making sounds, I used to perceive any slight

that came towards me because I was never a fighter. I couldn't physically, I was always terrified of if somebody had a physical altercation, I'd shake and you know, just you get this sick feeling in your stomach. But how I used to put reins on that and try and turn that into something positive was I didn't know what I was doing at the time, but I'd go into a room. If someone annoyed me, I'd go into a room and I'd just scream and sing, but as loud and as hard as I could. And looking back on it now, I think what I was doing, I was verbalizing my pain, but I was also getting better at singing. So I was in some way using that energy from negative energy and in a way turn it into positivity for me. I didn't realise that at the time, but now looking back, I realised that that was probably

a gift. I grew up in a very musical household. Like you said, my father was a fairly prominent musician in Ireland. So I grew up at the foot of somebody who was expressing himself all the time on the piano. I used to sleep downstairs on a mattress on the ground. There was a piano in the corner, there's a guitar, bass, drums, and there was just writing on the wall for 20 years. It was called the Rock and Roll Room. So there was like some pretty modest houses, about three bedrooms. We had six kids, like you said, there was

eight people and my granny and a dog and a bird and all. So it was pretty crazy growing up. Before we get onto your failures, which obviously will involve your recollections of this best friend, who you, you said something so beautiful about Mark that you knew him before you knew what knowing was, one of the interviews that I read. What was he like? Just a great guy to be around. You know, I was, he was four or five years older than me.

I was coming out of a bad patch, I guess, as a kid, trying to find what I was going to do in life, you know, I was, I got diagnosed with a disease called Wilson's disease when I was about 11 or 12. And I lost all my friends around that time, because if you get diagnosed with something, kids don't, kids think they can get it, but it hit me really hard, I guess, as a kid that I was shunned away, if you know what I mean. I don't blame anybody for that, but I remember being at a particularly low point. Mark was a break dance teacher in this place called the Blue

Lagoon, which was like a youth club center. I just remember looking at the class and I was watching MTV and stuff as a kid and I was watching everybody, like you said, TLC, all these people dancing, so colourful and amazing. I was like, what a great thing to be able to do. So this was the closest thing that I'd seen to America was like in my local youth club. It was breakdancing. I was like, that looks like a lot of fun. So I went in, I started the class right at the back of the class. I was terrible for months and months, you know what I mean?

But I started like, get my act together and started doing the routines and stuff. And I started moving up towards the front of the class, made friends with Mark, made friends with everyone in the class. And then things progressed. I started teaching then. I got got really good. And then after about two or two or three years, started teaching.

So Mark had a group of kids that he taught, but also that were good enough to then teach out. So it was like it was the first time, I guess, I'd seen his ability to, like, have people do stuff for him. You know, he was a great businessman. He was also making a cut off all the kids who were teaching for him, too. So we'd have us all out in different places. We'd all then report back to him on the weekend, give the money in. But I was a kid, like, and I had very little confidence. I didn't know what I was supposed

to be doing in life. And this was probably the first person, I guess, that put me on a path, gave me something to aim for. It was somebody that gave me confidence, that trusted me, no matter what, he knew that I had something wrong. He knew all these things. So that kind of confidence to be pumping into a young kid is at that, I suppose, at that age in life is absolute gold. You know, he'd stand up for you if there was anything going on. He was a great fighter.

He was a great friend. Very funny. He had an aura. You know, those people who have it, he had it. I think the kids would call it Riz. Riz, yeah. That's what they say. Riz with a lot of drip, yeah.

Let's get on to your failures. Your first failure is that you failed music in school and you subsequently dropped out and so you failed to complete your schooling. So we've heard a bit about your childhood there, about being surrounded by musicians and the power of storytelling. But there was something about you that was resistant to music in the first place. What was that? Well, because my brothers had been in bands, my dad had been in a band, my dad would be out on tour, or my brothers would be out on tour. Seeing my mum miss my dad and seeing her miss the kids, I guess I just rebelled against

it for a little bit. In Ireland back then, we didn't have a really great music program. We had like, your instrument was a recorder. So everybody comes in just playing a recorder. I was pretty good. I've got a great ear for music, so I don't need to practice on it. So if I have a recorder and you tell me to play fair or jack, I can play it straight away. I don't even need to practice on it. So if I have a recorder and you tell me to play Faire Jacques, I can play it straightaway. I don't even need to practice.

And where I guess somebody else beside me wasn't able to do it, I just excelled in that area so I could play anything on piano by ear from growing up in a music room. Same thing on guitar. But the one thing I couldn't do was remember what year Beethoven was born. I couldn't spell his name. I couldn't for the life of me think about what his parents were called, what city he was from, any of the academic stuff that goes along with

studying music. When I failed, I failed music. And yeah, it was shocking for me because I went to the school for that. I thought I prided myself on it. I was just like so nonchalant sitting in the back of class, like I can do whatever I want. And it was clear that I couldn't.

And then I left Benild as a fourth year because I wasn't getting on well in the school, et cetera. My mom just thought like, just let's go for a change. We went to another place where there was less rules. There was no uniform. You could smoke. It was not in class, but outside, like, you know, it was a lot less rules on it, which

I think suited me. And I went there and then I spent a year there and it kind of just got a little worse for me. So I was okay. Like I got pretty decent marks, but I just wasn't interested in school and the music bug had caught me big time. I was sitting down the back of class. My mum was saying that, my teacher was like, look, he's doing nothing. He's just sitting in the back of class writing songs and poems and all sorts. So here's the other side. You should take a look at them because they're really good. So I don't know what he wants to do or what you want to do with them. So my mom said in between fifth and sixth year, what do you want to do? And she found this place called

the Parnell School of Music and they took me in on my practical. So I played, I sang, and they allowed me. They were a little less stringent on the academic side. So the fact that I couldn't remember names or, you know, didn't matter to them. I absolutely love the place. I went in for production for piano, guitar, bass, drums, production, vocal arrangements. And then I was there about four or five months and I then got a record deal in America, which is crazy. So Mark, in the meantime, Mark had set up a band called My Town. They'd done a few showcases and they were invited back over to do a showcase, but one of the members had subsequently left the band. And Mark obviously knew me a long time. He knew I could pick up anything, I could sing, I could play anything.

And he was like, look, we got a showcase in, I think it was a month, back over in America for this guy called Doug Morris from Universal. And he said, do you want to be in the band? I said, been waiting for this guy called Doug Morris from Universal and he said, you want to be in the band? I said, I've been waiting for this my whole life, you know? So, so I joined the band. We went over and we got a, we got a record deal. We got signed for, it was the biggest pop deal in history. So we got signed for 15 million.

Are you joking? No. That's wild. Yeah, look it up. We got signed for 15 million over seven. Now when you say I didn't get the money, it's over like seven albums and you span the money over that. So I was like 16, 17.

I got whisked out of Ireland, got flown over to America. We ended up working with them. Boys To Men, Dallas Austin, who produces for TLC, Teddy Riley for Black Street, Montell Jordan, like back in the day, you know all these people. People listening there are like, who are these people? You're really showing your age. You know what I mean? So you're 16, 17 when you go to A&E. Yeah. Before we get onto that bit, I'm very interested in your childhood because clearly it was filled

with love. Yeah. And it sounds like it was also filled with a slight edge of danger because you've mentioned fighting a few times and how you had to be a fighter to get through. What was it like? Was it quite difficult? I'm lucky I'm not, I wasn't from the poorest areas in Dublin. It was just, we're working class, you know, I think in Ireland, no matter how

much money you have, if you have six kids, you know, life's tough. You know what I mean? You have to provide for them. So, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't grown up fighting on the streets of Dublin or anything like that, you know, nothing of the sort. But I guess in Ireland, the more, the older I'm getting, the more I realised that the alcoholism that was going on around me, the constant partying that was going on around me, the fact that our family, I guess, was in entertainment. There's a lot of leeway given, there's a lot of liberties that are given.

And I don't personally, I wouldn't change it, any of it, but I'd be mad to not look back on it and think some of the difficulties I got into later on in life would have been because I came up from that kind of an upbringing. Now I just mean that you know it's we're so sociable in Ireland. You know my dad was an amazing piano player. People adored him and who is he to stop people coming back from the house and having a party and you know so but also there was there's not somebody else saying like we shouldn't be doing this. Everybody in the whole neighborhood is like, let's go

back. It's back to shades. We're going to play piano. But at the same time, this could be a Saturday night. This could be a Sunday night. This could be, I'm up for school the next morning. And then it would happen quite regularly, but not just with my dad. My brothers were in bands as well. So there was always something to celebrate. There was always a big show going on. There was always tons of people around, which looking back, I don't think was the best environment for me growing up academically, you know, going into school the next morning, tired. I just, I always remember just being exhausted in school. And when you say some of the trouble you got yourself into later in life, what are you

referring to? Did you ever struggle with substance abuse? Yeah, alcohol, big time. I still do. I think the part of it, I was very experimentative as a kid, as you would be. I'm a musician. So yeah, I've done drugs in the past and that would be a reoccurring, like I'd go sober for a few years and then, you know, have a few drinks and then this, that and the other. So I'm always dabbling and this, that and the other, but never to the extent where it's gotten too out of hand where I've had to go anywhere, you know? So I think, but I don't have any, I don't have any difference of story than anybody else growing up from my time in Dublin. And that's the mad part is the coping mechanisms.

Right. So what I talked about before is I failed music in school. The reason why I only found out, like I said, I'm 44 years old now. The reason why I failed all of those things is because I'm dyslexic. So what I did was I went back through my mind, in my mind, I went back through all of those certain situations where everything just fell into place why if i had a scenario where i supposed to learn in school was the hardest thing for me to do was to because i don't learn at the same speed as everybody else. else. I learn in a different way. So I'm very physical with dance, I excelled in dancing and music in a lot of different arts. So I wouldn't necessarily learn the same as everybody else. But even things like that took through to adult life. I have the scenario where if the anxiety builds up and this feeling builds up inside me, if I'm going to do something that I've never done

before, because the kid in me is saying, they're going to ask you to do something you're not able to do and it's going to be embarrassing for you and you're not going to be able to know what it is. And just, so I'll jeopardize myself before I get to that point and I'll make up something else and blow up that makes me not go to that thing. If it's something that I feel innately, I'm not going to be able to handle or I'm going to seem like I'm not as good as everybody else. It's like, I don't know, it's like mixing with imposter syndrome or throwing, being shunned by some of my friends from finding out I had a disease as a kid. So all of those things mixes this giant cocktail that you just, everything then has to go through

that filter before it even gets you. I know we're jumping around a lot, but that's life. Life jumps around a lot. And I feel this year, because Mark passed away, I've had this epiphany, I guess, that like last year, like when you're talking about substances, I've never been into hard, hard drugs at all. But like I said, smoked a little bit during the years and stuff too. But alcohol was the big one. Depression is a massive one. After Mark passed away last year, I called a therapist straight away. A friend of mine

suggested a therapist to me that they thought was very good because I felt like I was doing okay. I felt like my best friends just passed away. I haven't cried yet. I've just gotten through the funerals. We had two funerals. We've also been going around the world and we'll dedicate a song to them every night and allowing the fans to openly grieve as well. So I guess I got an inkling that maybe something's coming down the road here and I'd like to get there before it gets me. So contacting a therapist and then one therapy session is not enough. Two isn't enough.

A week is not enough. A month is not enough. You need to be going to a therapist for at least a few months. Give it at least six weeks before that person has the chance to see you in in different states to then get an overall opinion, you know, because everybody has the perfect five minute me. Like I'm sitting here, you know what I mean? Like I sit here and within five minutes, good phrase, the five minute me. But if you hang up, that's why podcasts are brilliant. Because after the five minutes, it's you that's who people actually get to

see past the bullshit. You know what I mean? And then experience who you are. But I think therapy, the therapy side of it for me was brilliant in that I was seeing levels. I was able to step outside myself. And it was the first time it opened my mind to the fact that there might be somebody else in here who's trying to jeopardize me. The fact that you can catch yourself doing something. But the trick is once you catch yourself doing something, you can never unsee it. As in, I'll give you an example. It was almost Christmas time when I got home this Christmas and I was about to get on the plane and I was saying to myself,

Dublin's going to be quite triggering for me. I'm gonna be stone-cold sober for the whole of Christmas because he's everywhere, Mark's everywhere and also people they just want to show support and they can't help but bring it up and I get it but just like my father, when my father passed away I deal with it in my time but this is something that I have to do in real time and it's going to be every day probably for the rest of my life. So I'm going to have to deal with it. And I think by the time I got off the plane, I was smashed with every intention to get on that plane saying, I'm not going to drink at all.

And then while I was on it, whiskey please, bang. And I just hammered the whiskies, got home and I pretty much spent Christmas just pissed. I do this one thing on Christmas day, doing it for 14 years now where I go to Temple Street Children's Hospital from nine in the morning till three, three in the afternoon we spent time with the kids and the nurses and it's a beautiful, beautiful morning. So I wasn't drunk Christmas Eve after the hospital and then just went straight out to my sister's had dinner straight on the Guinness again. And I went like the 25th, 26th, 27th just drunk the whole time. And then the 27th, I said, if I stay in Dublin much longer, this is just so bad for me.

So I just, I cut a short, went home to the UK where I have my studio and stuff, my girlfriend lives. And, and I just, just I said that's it. That's it. I'm finished. I'm finished drinking. I'm finished smoking. I'm finished anything stimulating caffeine. Everything. It was on the 27th of December and that's it. I gave up everything that day and I for the first time was to legitimately say, there's another guy in here who's fucking hijacking me. And then also on top of that, I bit the bullet and I went back to church. I want to ask you more about that.

Sorry, I've talked for literally- No, it was amazing. I blasted you there for 30 minutes. It was amazing and I am so admiring of your courage It was amazing. And I am so admiring of your courage for facing that inner demon that you have. Yeah. And the scariest kind of inner demon is one that has your face is one that is part of you. Oh, I love, I love that guy. I mean, he got me through my worst times.

He protected you in the way that he knew how. And it sounds to me so much as if you had, there was a lot of confusion. Some of it was beautiful confusion in your childhood. Some of it was beautiful chaos. And actually now you're getting clarity and that comes across loud and clear. And actually, you have explained your third failure as you perceive it, which is your failure to look after yourself physically and spiritually as an adult. Yeah, 100%. And I want to come back to that failure specifically, but I wonder if you could tell me more about

your faith and your journey with that. My name is Christine. And I'm Zandi. And we're siblings and the hosts of Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet, a podcast where we do dramatic readings of the most wild and off the wall reviews on the internet. We find the funniest real reviews about everything from Vegas weddings, matchmaking services and Trader Joe's to caves, toddler beds and Spirit Halloween. You won't believe the things people think absolutely must be said on the internet. How else would everyone know some caves don't have Wi Fi?

We hear about the good, the bad and the time Spirit Halloween sent someone a dildo instead of a Halloween costume. Listen to Beach to You Sandy, Water to Wet every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. He killed at least 19 people during the 1980s in South Africa. Very dark times. People were desperate.

We were looking for him, we couldn't find him, and nobody knew where he was. Every single one of his victims was black. He reached such a stage where he was now hunting. Yeah, it comes and it goes. Like grief. Yeah, yeah. Depending on the stage that you're going through in life, you look for different things and crutches and I grew up in very, in Catholic Ireland.

My mum was very religious, my dad also, we were, you know, not to say made go to church, but church was a part of our upbringing. We went on a Sunday. My sister used to take me all the time. And then I became an altar boy. So I had an instilled belief in Christianity and Jesus and stuff from a kid. So I lost faith, I guess, not lost it,

but I just, it wasn't at the forefront of my thinking. I think, you know, when you're a teenager, um, particularly in your twenties, you just like, you know, it's sex, drugs and rock and roll. And it's, you know, that's the last thing you're thinking of. And you don't want to think of, of this, this guy looking down on you all the time. And he knows all your, what you're doing, because a lot of the stuff you do in your teens is bad, well perceived bad anyway, because it would be necessarily against what your parents would want for you. If you know what I'm saying? So you have this, you know,

it's naughty and it feels good, but it's not kind of stuff. So I guess I lost it through that, but I'm always returned to it. I've always been massively spiritual. When I say spiritual, I've meditated. I don't, I know that I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb enough to know that I'll never know. Yes, that's so well put. That's exactly how I feel. Yeah, so I don't need the answers. I don't need to find the answer to go, this is it. I have a feeling I have things that have happened in my life that are very specific to me. And that's, I don't need to explain that to anybody else about who I think, you know, who I think God is or what I think it is.

But I feel it. It's funny because I'm the guy who sings, you know, I'm still alive, but I'm barely breathing. I just prayed to a God that I don't believe in, right? In the song Break Even. So people were like, well, he's atheist. And it's like, no, I'm in such a bad spot right now that I just prayed to somebody that I swore I didn't believe in. But why am I praying? Because I obviously do. Do you know what I mean? Yes. I also am aware that the time that you're talking about after your teenage years, you lost your dad very young. He died aged 63 on Valentine's Day. And then your mom died on the same day some years later.

Same day, 10 years later. And they both died of aneurysms, is that right? But different kind. Yeah, my dad died of stomach aneurysm, my mum was brain aneurysm. I'm so sorry. And I can't imagine how horrendous that was to go through. And I wonder what those losses, had they informed your spiritual relationship? I'm not sure because it was so confusing at a time. My dad, Pat, because there's a lot of things going on at that one time where we'd just gotten a record deal in America

and we were like, that's it, we're back in, you know, my tenet failed and then we were back in again with the script now. And we just got signed and we got a call to say that Mark's mother had fallen very ill. So Mark immediately was like, well, I've got to go back to Dublin. So we kind of packed up everything in America and we moved back to Dublin. We'd set up a studio at the back in a place called James Street, where his his mom and his family had this shed at the back that we turned into the studio. It was right beside where Guinness's brewery is. So you got the smell of hops and stuff during the day. But we wrote there and he was going around to visit his mom

during, she was in James Street Hospital, and he would see her during the day and then he'd come around and on those hours just pour his heart out on the page, which songs like The End Where I Begin and Anybody There, excuse me, songs kind of came around from that era. And I thought I was being there for him as a mate by moving everything, coming home, because it was the best headspace for him to be in, considering we'd just gotten another record deal and this is our second bite you know, bite at the, at the, the pie or whatever, or cherry. And I didn't realize, but then those, in those times, his mom had been slowly, I guess, passing away over,

over while she'd been deteriorating. And I was getting to hang out with my dad again, cause I'd been in America for a number of years and now I was coming back as an adult getting to spend time with my dad. And it was maybe, again because I'd been in America for a number of years and now I was coming back as an adult getting to spend time with my dad and it was maybe I think it was about six or seven months later Mark's mom had passed away within a few months my dad within the day he was there in the morning and gone at night and it was crazy like I said you talk about idolizing my Mark my dad was the man you know what I mean he was the one that stemmed it all off from, you know, all of our brothers still to this day, we just want to be my dad because he was so kind, so generous, so amazingly, like people think

I'm good. You should, you should have seen me dad, like he was incredible. And so the impact of that was massive. But at the same time, our first song had just broken on radio. You know, Joe Wiley gave us his first spin on We Cry. And I just got sucked into the into this, what this is now. So I don't know if I really. If I really dealt with it at the time, like I should have again, smoking and drinking. But I've got things to distract me from really facing what was going on and dealing with those issues at the time. Got sucked into the machine, we had all that success and we had like Manicamp, we moved and Breakeven came out and we went like, we had top five in America and it was just everything I've ever wanted, anything my dad had ever wanted

and my family had ever wished for was all coming through at the one time and he's not here to see any of it. That's so weird, isn't it? He trained me for it, like specifically, he was like, I'm not saying this for a ticket spree, he's like, you're going to be bigger than Elvis Presley, you're going to be bigger than Elvis, he was telling me since I was a kid, he's probably, look at my hair. I was going to say, it struck me today, like all day that you look really like Elvis Presley. In his early years.

Yeah, in all the later years. I'm not saying the Vegas years. But he told me, and it was a big sickener, it still is that he's not got to see this. People will tell me that he's been, he called it from the get-go. So since I was a kid, he was like telling everybody, wait, wait, and you see him. You think those are the two are good when you see this guy. And then, like I said, we got sucked into the machine. Um, we were on our third album.

We then the voice came along. We'd had two number one albums. People knew who we were, but we needed like a moment that people could put the face to the name, to the band, to the music, and the voice came along. And then that was like this huge, even like we thought we were famous before and it was just like put us in the stratosphere. And that was the time where it got its craziest, you know, like paparazzis under your bush, you know, taking pictures, anybody going in and out of your house, all that kind of stuff. And then on the second year of The Voice, my mum, I got a call basically, my mum has

had a, she's, you know, basically just get home now. And we, I rushed the hospital with her and we'd been in the hospital for a number of months. She had, she, she couldn't talk, couldn't speak. She had very low, low levels of communication skills. And it took her a long time to get back to even, it's called EDL, like everyday living, to a level where she could come back to the house again and just kind of like, just do the things that she normally did. So I just kind of shut up shop at that point. I just like, I left the voice, but I was just like, I have to go home.

She then kind of was a different, she was a different person, a different mom, but then we got time to really spend time together where she's just lying, just my great favorite memories of me, her just lying in bed watching something on TV, two of us like sitting there holding hands and I'm just lying on TV with my mom,

like I was four years old again, you know. I just thought it was a really funny story actually, she was there because of the brain aneurysm. She's like, you want to come upstairs and watch some hardcore porn? And I was like, what the fuck is this? She goes, yeah, do you want to watch some porn stars upstairs? And I was like, are you asking me to go watch the porn stars that's on the Scroovery channel? She's like, yeah.

I was like, okay now, man. It's like, just hilarious. now, mom. It's like, the gift to get kind of get, and she's just laughing her ass off. She's like, why, what did I say? And I said, you said this. And it was just a laugh and you try and find humor in, in any around or all of it, you know? But I, I, I, again, I had time to spend with her and to really know that she loved me and she didn't just love me because it's a mother's job to love a kid but she liked me. You know and I got to find that out and had this great really great relationship with her towards the end and my whole family rallied around

to help make sure that those last few years that she had were were huge. So but my mum still to her to her last days huge believer in God God, we used to pray together. She lost faith after my dad passed away. She had a lot of questions about it. You know, if there was a God, why is he not still here? Why did you not take me instead? You know, beautiful way to think about things. I then, I guess I not lost faith, but I just put it on the back burner.

And then I didn't realise, and this is probably a later thing and I'm only realizing it now through having my eyes open is. The more the society continues on and the more social media happens the you're supposed to we grew up with this trust in government you know or government and your institutions. in government, you know, or government and your institutions about like schooling all the way across the board, religion, everything. But within society, they removed religion and they removed spirituality and they made stuff so beige. But if you take out spirituality and the good parts of religion out of society, something very bad is going to fill that space. And I feel like the more I'm an adult now, I feel like in that period, church was a laughing stock to me. Like if

I had told anybody I was going to go to church to pray over my mum or whatever, I'd be laughed at or there was all that sexual abuse stuff. So it's like, it comes with this horrible label that is manmade. That's not-made, that's man manipulating that. And like I said, specifically I grew up in a Catholic society, so if I had grown up anywhere else in the world, it probably would have been another denomination, it would have been another religion. I still would have had those same beliefs. There is something higher than we are. I just know that I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb enough to know that I'll never know.

I'm going to use that line myself. You're welcome. My final question on this particular failure is whether you think, whether your spirituality is one that allows the idea that when you die, you will see your loved ones again. Of the firm belief that the stuff that I do feel, I feel that I am you. You are me. We are all made of molecules. All these molecules made the universe.

The realms of time and infinity. You're only here for a short amount of time. I don't have any fear of dying. I have a fear of how I'm going to die, but death and being in a place with nothingness. I was there before for a lot longer than I and I'm going to be there again. So I'll feel more at home there than I probably ever will here. I know that even the likes of Mark, my mom, my dad, they're all here. They're helping me. They're not like on my shoulder telling me things or whatever, but I know that I feel them. I am them. I'm going to go back to source. Like whatever the source was, I know that they're there and I know that I'm going to go back.

Is it a big party in heaven and there's all angels and what else? I don't know. Is alcohol good or drugs good? Is there drugs in heaven? Is there not? Do you know what I mean? Is there music in heaven? What type of music is certain? Are cats allowed and dogs allowed? You know what I mean? I know. What kind of music? Because one person's heavenly music would be another person's just fingernails on the chalkboard. Hell. Do you know what I'm saying? Like how diplomatic do we have to be in heaven now? Do you know what I mean?

We've got every, if you're letting everybody who's good up there, we've all got different tastes and stuff. So I'm not, I don't think about it as that deep and I don't put like, if I have a certain elements of faith that I do believe in or some that are questionable, I don't discount all of it because I can't answer this one thing. If you're looking for what you're supposed to do in life, lean into every feeling, lean into every emotion. If it's fear, if it's pain, if it's anguish, if it's anything, lean into the mob, because that's all you have while you're here.

Rinse life, you know Lovett or Leave It. You know it can be tempting to tune out the news completely, but my producers won't let me, so instead I put on a weekly comedy show about it. Every week, I welcome an all-star lineup of comedians, performers, politicians, and random gay guys to make sense of politics and pop culture. And even when we don't succeed, boy, we have fun trying, so join us as we run down the latest headlines and figure out what the hell we're all going to do about it. Listen to Love It or Leave It wherever you get your podcasts. Wherever you're going, you better believe American

Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the I I feel like I'm in a session with the most amazing professor of philosophy. It's actually so enlightening. You're expressing things that I really deeply feel, but articulating them in a way. It's exactly what you said you did at the start, turning your pain into a focal point that other people can connect with and to. And thank you for that. We've got one more failure because I skipped it. Your second failure was that you failed with the first big record deal you had. Now, was that the 15 million one or was that, okay, so how did you fail with it?

Well, it was, it was failure for me at the time and like I said I was young we we had a single out at the time it did fairly well we we ended up being on like smash hits road show those were the days. Up proper I was like you know everybody was on that show at the time and that was a big staple day for me to be like on that I'm like I'm I'm finally on smash hits. Like we're in the magazine. Like, you know, it was like being on first time on top of the pops or something. You're like, that's it. Now you've made it.

Um, but I, at the time I thought that was literally the end of my career stroke. Life was, um, we, we had the single out, the single did all right to put the album out, the album compared to the amount of who how that went on while we were signed, it failed, you know, it was a flop. And I went home, a tail between my legs. I was devastated. And also I'm in a musical family, so even more weight was put on it because of the excitement about what it could have been and the amount of money. It was a dead set. It was the most surest thing you could ever have. And then a few years later, I just find myself back in Dublin, me and Mark, tail between our legs, not much money to show for it.

Kind of the money that we had, we saved up. And he had met his wife, Rena, while we were away. And then she was recording, who wasn't his wife at the time, but she was recording an album. And we got invited over to come and kind of write a few songs and work with her and stuff. And we were like, look, let's just give it our best shot, give it our best go. If all we do is we're like, if I'm making tea at the back of the studio from now on, I don't care, I just want to be involved in music. So we flew over to Orlando to go work with her.

And then we got introduced to this guy called Johnny Wright, who managed Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake and NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, all these different people. And we, you know, if you let an Irish person in, put your foot in the door, we're bringing everybody in. So bring the whole kitchen sink over. So, you know, we got an opportunity to do it and we never let go of it. So we went over, flew over. We got a gig, a paying gig. If I hadn't of believed in myself and backed, backed myself to go do it again, the script would have never happened. I would have been, I think 23, 24, washed up musician with my career over.

And this is just a lesson to people who feel like they're coming into something a little bit later on in life. I was 27 when I got signed for the script. So think about people who think like your pop career or your, you know, when you're young that that's all you have as youth is like, no, we, we, we did it later on in life. So it was a bit of a blessing because I think if I had gotten the fame, considering everything I talked about, if I had gotten that fame early on, I probably would have been washed

up and career over by 23, 24. So by the age of 27, then I was fully formed as an adult, as a human, and then ready to basically enter into, I guess, the most important part of my life, you know. Danielle Donoghue, I think what has come across loud and clear is that everything can be a blessing in what you make of it or what you learn from it. Yeah, exactly. And I cannot thank you enough for being so open hearted and coming on How To Fail.

I've loved every second of it. Amazing. I like to say I'm so glad you've success as well. I watch the podcast all the time. Stop it. But the things you do is great. Thank you. Well, it means a lot to me, but you're going to stay and help a couple of listeners who've

written in for your wise words of wisdom. So join us on Failing with Friends. And thank you so much. No worries. Thank you. Remember to follow us to get new episodes as they land on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please share a link with everyone you know. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.