Some places are more than buildings.
A pub is not just beer, carpet, brass taps, old stools, and a bloke at the bar who has had the same coat since 1997.
A real pub is memory.
It is noise when life has gone quiet.
It is warmth when the world has gone cold.
It is the place where people walk in as strangers and leave with someone knowing their name.
That is where I Love This Pub comes from.
A Backroom Saints song about the last real room left.
Listen to I Love This Pub while you read.
Pubs were never just pubs
The people who do not understand pubs think they are about alcohol.
They are wrong.
A good pub is about belonging.
It is where men talk without saying too much.
Where women hold court better than Parliament.
Where old lads become local historians after three pints and one disputed Blackburn Rovers memory.
Where grief sits in the corner.
Where jokes do heavy lifting.
Where loneliness gets interrupted.
Where someone notices you have not been in.
That matters.
Because being noticed is not a small thing.
For some people, it is the difference between staying in the fight and slipping out of sight.
Why I wrote I Love This Pub
I am Scott “Matchmaker” Michaels, frontman of Backroom Saints.
I wrote I Love This Pub because I believe pubs are one of the last working-class churches left.
Not holy in the polished sense.
Holy in the human sense.
A pint.
A song.
A laugh.
A row.
A hug.
A bad jukebox choice.
A familiar face.
A room where nobody needs a password, subscription, QR code, or brand activation to belong.
That is rare now.
Everything has been made smoother, cleaner, colder, and more expensive.
But a proper pub still has rough edges.
Good.
People have rough edges too.
The last real room left
Modern life has made people lonelier while pretending to connect them.
We are online all day and still isolated.
We are tracked, measured, nudged, sorted, and sold to.
We have apps for friendship, apps for dating, apps for health, apps for food, apps for music, apps for football, apps for everything except sitting across from another human being and saying, “You alright?”
A pub does that without pretending it invented community.
That is why I Love This Pub is not nostalgia for the sake of it.
It is not just misty-eyed nonsense about “the good old days.”
The good old days had plenty wrong with them. Let’s not put a flat cap on a lie.
But pubs gave people something modern life keeps taking away.
A room.
A real room.
With real people in it.
For fans of The Pogues, The Dubliners and Frank Turner
If you like songs about pubs, people, friendship, survival, and ordinary life, I Love This Pub will make sense.
It sits somewhere between the pub-hearted chaos of The Pogues, the communal warmth of The Dubliners, the storytelling drive of Frank Turner, and the working-class honesty of songs that sound better when sung together.
Backroom Saints is not polished pop.
It is not fake rebellion.
It is old songs with new scars.
Music for the priced out, tracked, replaced, and forgotten.
When pubs close, people lose more than beer
When a pub closes, the spreadsheet says one business failed.
That is not the full truth.
A community loses a meeting place.
A lonely man loses somewhere to sit.
A local band loses a first stage.
A football fan loses a matchday ritual.
A widow loses familiar faces.
A young worker loses somewhere cheaper than a city-centre lifestyle brand pretending to be authentic.
The building might become flats.
The sign might come down.
The developers might call it progress.
But something human goes with it.
And once it is gone, you cannot download it back.
I Love This Pub is a protest song too
Not every protest song needs to sound angry.
Some protest songs protect what is beautiful.
I Love This Pub is a protest against the cold version of the future.
The cashless, faceless, soulless version.
The future where every human habit is turned into data.
The future where community is replaced by “engagement.”
The future where a local becomes a brand experience and a pint becomes an asset class with foam.
No thanks.
Give me the old room.
Give me the bad joke.
Give me the sticky table.
Give me the bloke who says, “Same again?”
Give me somewhere people still look up when the door opens.
Why the song matters
A song will not save every pub.
But it can remind people why pubs are worth saving.
It can give people a chorus for something they already feel.
Because people do not just need housing, wages, and work.
They need places.
Places to laugh.
Places to grieve.
Places to sing.
Places to argue.
Places to belong.
That is what I Love This Pub is about.
Not drinking.
Belonging.
Listen to I Love This Pub
I Love This Pub is a Backroom Saints song fronted by Scott “Matchmaker” Michaels.
Raw working-class protest music for the priced out, tracked, replaced, and forgotten.
For the people who still believe pubs, music, football, friendship, and ordinary rooms matter.
Old songs.
New scars.
Listen now.
Then send it to someone who still has a local worth fighting for.