An ordinary London pub has become a hit with visitors. An American superstar is to blame

The song, titled The Black Dog, was released on the American singer’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, on April 19. Dedicated to a former love, it sings: “Until recently, I was someone you shared your secrets with. And also location, you forgot to turn it off. And so I watch you walk into a bar called The Black Dog…”

Fans immediately began to search if there really was a pub with the same name in London, where the singer’s ex-partner, actor Joe Alwyn, came from. It didn’t take long to find her. Since then, it has been full, according to the CNN server.

Maddie Essigová, an American studying in London, was among the first visitors. “Joe and Taylor spent a lot of time together in London, so I assumed that the business would be here somewhere,” confided the fan who arrived at the pub with her friend Jenna Spackey.

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Neither of them had visited the London district of Vauxhall, where The Black Dog is located, until then. “People will go to all the places that Taylor mentions,” Spackey says of the singer’s older track London Boy, which names various neighborhoods in the British capital, including Brixton, Camden, the West End, Hackney and Bond Street. “The Black Dog will definitely be added to that list,” adds Spackey.

The business uses marketing

Although there is another pub with the same name in London (some fans also point to a bar in Cork, Ireland), it is the establishment in the Vauxhall district that has come under the radar of the singer’s fans. And of course, the brew took advantage of this and put the text from the song in the window and the caption “home of tortured poets” on Instagram – alluding to the title of the entire album.

Lily Bottomley is the Social Media Manager at SC Soho, which also owns The Black Dog. She found out about the song herself through the Internet. “Even before the release, we had visitors here,” Bottomley notes, adding that the business hired extra security for the first weekend after the album’s release, but luckily nothing scandalous happened.

However, the reputation of the company is gradually growing and people are already making reservations even for August, when Taylor Swift will play eight concerts in the British capital at Wembley Stadium. Of course hopelessly sold out.

The pub is not complaining about the influx of new visitors, according to Bottomley, on the contrary, it is also planning karaoke evenings with Taylor Swift songs. “We had a lot of fans here one evening who didn’t know each other, but they put tables and chairs together, it was a great atmosphere,” describes the social media manager.

She adds that she has never seen the singer herself in the establishment, which makes sense. It follows from her song that she only observed the events inside herself from the outside.