On Friday, April 19, Swift released her latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department” in a simple version and in an enhanced version, with 15 additional songs, under the title “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology”.
In this enhanced version, there is the song “The Black Dog”in which Swift sings about an ex who left his cellphone’s location settings on after the breakup:
“And so I watch as you enter
In a bar called The Black Dog
And you open new holes in my heart”
As soon as these lyrics hit the internet, Swifties, as Taylor Swift’s die-hard fans are called, started digging. Because the album is said to be influenced by Taylor Swift’s split with the London actor Joe Alwin – which was followed by a brief but passionate relationship with the singer’s countryman Matty Healy of the 1975 complex – the search focused on the British capital.
But is The Black Dog a real part of London or just a fictional name chosen for its symbolic meaning? Only the songwriter herself can answer that. As well as The Black Dog pub in Vauxhall there is a pub of the same name just outside the city in the suburb of Brentford. But the south London pub has made sure to take immediate advantage of this unexpected fame and is now swarmed with Swift fans at all hours of the day.
Taylor’s Version Cocktail
In her shop window there is now a sign with the lyrics written on it. On Instagram, the pub added the phrase to its bio “home for tortured poets”, as a reference to the album title. The cocktail list has the addition of “Taylor’s Version,” a reference to how Swift separates her newly reworked tracks from the originals.
Lily Bottomley, events and social media manager for SC Soho, the small group that owns The Black Dog pub, tells CNNi that she learned about the song through her personal social media before the record was released. “And within half a day – even before the album came out – we had new customers,” he says.
The Black Dog pub is located on a quiet street in Vauxhall, South London
Francesca Street, CNN
For the weekend of the album’s release, the pub hired extra security – “just for precautionary reasons, nothing crazy happened.”
It was followed by “a really busy Monday” and a flurry of bookings for late June and mid-August, when Swift will give eight sold-out concerts at Wembley Stadium. The Black Dog plans to operate extended hours on those days.
News outlets around the world are writing about the pub, and cameras are set up outside the pub and people are constantly making videos for TikTok.
The Black Dog was already active on Instagram before it was made famous by Swift, but Bottomley and her team were quick to open a TikTok account as well when the album was released.
“Our TikTok, within 72 hours, got over 200,000 likes and a million views,” he says. While Instagram followers “have tripled, almost quadrupled now.”
It has already started selling souvenirs of the pub (shipping worldwide) by demand from Swifties everywhere, while the immediate plans are to introduce karaoke night with songs by Swift. An idea that came about when the singer’s fans who fill the store – the overwhelming majority of them women – start singing after consuming a few Aperol Spritz – Taylor’s Version…
With information from: What it’s like inside The Black Dog, the London pub made famous by Taylor Swift by Francesca Street, CNN
