Lifting the Roof: Irish Pub Anthems, Big Nights Out, and Love Songs to Your Local

Irish pub music does not live at one volume.

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at how Guinness, music and community form a kind of triangle of belonging. In Part 2, we went quiet, into rebel songs and seisiúns that make a pub fall silent and turn a bar into a listening room.

This time, we are turning the dial the other way.

Part 3 is about the lift the roof moments: the anthems that turn a room into a choir, the nights that spill out of the pub and onto a bus, and the modern songs that sound a lot like love letters to your local.

When an Anthem Takes Over the Room

There are songs that get played in a pub, and there are songs that take over the pub.

Whiskey in the Jar is one of those.

You can feel the shift before you even register the tune. A few notes, a couple of words, and suddenly the whole room knows what is coming.

Shoulders loosen. People lean toward each other. The "I am not singing tonight" crowd quietly abandons that plan.

By the chorus, the pub has turned into a choir:

Some people know every word.
Some are faking half the lines.
Nobody cares.

It is not about accuracy. It is about permission:

Permission to be loud.
Permission to be a little ridiculous.
Permission to belong for the length of a song.

These anthems are pressure valves. They let the week out of people. They give strangers a reason to shout the same words at the same time and then laugh about it when the song ends.

For a few minutes, the pub is not just a place you drink. It is a place you let go, together.

The Weight Behind the Noise: "Zombie" by The Cranberries

Not every lift the roof song is light.

Every so often at Boland's, someone launches into Zombie by The Cranberries. It is not a trad tune, and it is not a rebel ballad in the old sense, but the effect is just as strong.

It is not a rare thing either. Different singers bring their own spin to it, some closer to the original, some rougher around the edges, some almost shouted from the first verse. But no matter who is leading it, the same thing happens when the chorus hits.

The room leans in and then erupts. Voices crack, notes break, and nobody is holding back on the line that everyone knows is coming.

It's in your hea-eyah-head, zommm-bie, zommmm-bie, eh! eh!! eh!!!

By the time that last "eh!" lands, the whole place is carrying it, from the front tables to the back wall.

Zombie is loud and raucous and emotional, but there is weight under all that noise. The song carries its own history and grief, and somehow that all rides into the room along with the volume. It proves that Irish anthems do not have to be old to matter. A 1990s rock song can sit right beside Whiskey in the Jar and do the same work. It pulls people out of themselves, gives them a place to put whatever they are carrying, and lets them yell it out together for a few minutes.

When the Pub Leaves the Building

If you want proof that a pub community is real, watch what happens when it leaves the building.

Some of our biggest we are really doing this moments have come on nights when Boland's was not the destination. It was the launchpad.

Bus trips to see The Coronas. Big nights with The Saw Doctors. A van, heading off to spend then night hearing Mundy. Groups of people we see at the bar turn into a convoy of friends with tickets, playlists and a shared plan.

On those nights:

The pre gig bus ride feels like an extension of the pub. "Bus buddies" reunite to pick up the story where it left off last time. The venue feels like a temporary home field because you are there together. The ride back is a blur of hoarse voices, half remembered setlists and did you see stories.

The songs do not change. The Coronas are still The Coronas. But your relationship to the music shifts.

It is no longer just a song we hear at the pub. It becomes:

That song from that night with my friends.

Once you have a few of those nights under your belt, you realize you are not just a customer anymore. You are part of a crowd with a history.

Modern Love Songs to the Local: Closing Time

Not all of this lives in the old tunes.

Recently, my son in law sent me a song he had on repeat: Closing Time by The Tumbling Paddies. On the surface, it is a love song. But if you listen closely, there is another love story running underneath it.

You hear lines like:

It is Saturday, you drop me off to meet the lads at the local spot

See you on the other side of midnight

I will be taking it handy on the Baileys and brandy

Feeling frisky on the Guinness and the whiskey

Where you go I will follow you, and if I fall I will fall for you come closing time

Yes, there is a romantic you in there. But there is also the local spot that anchors the weekend. There's the rhythm of being dropped off and picked up. Then the quiet understanding that closing time is not just about the bar shutting. It is about the shape of a life built around these nights.

It is hard not to hear it as a love song to the pub itself. To the ritual, the crowd, the familiar faces, the Guinness and whiskey that mark the hours.

In Pints and Power terms, Closing Time is a reminder that the pub is not just a backdrop. It is a character. It is the place where the rest of your life, work, family, love, keeps intersecting with music and community.

Everyone Has a Version of This

A funny thing happens when you start talking about this outside your own bubble. You realize how many people have their own version of it.

Recently, Lisa and I were in South Carolina for a wedding for a college friends daughter. Over breakfast with some of our old friends, the conversation drifted, like it always does, toward our place.

We talked about Boland's, the music, the big nights out, the songs that have become part of our weekends. They started talking about their local trivia night, the bands they follow, the regulars who always sit in the same spots.

Different towns. Different pubs. Different soundtracks.

Same pattern.

A place that pulls you back week after week.
A handful of songs that belong to that place now.
A group of people who might not have met any other way.

You realize this is not just your story. It is a shape of life that shows up wherever people gather around pints and songs and decide, consciously or not, to keep showing up.

How the Loud Nights Complete the Picture

Put all three parts of this series together and you get a fuller picture of what Irish pub music really does.

• Part 1 showed how Guinness, music and community form a triangle of belonging.
• Part 2 went into the quiet side, the rebel songs and seisiúns that build trust and shared memory.
• Part 3 is about the loud side, the anthems, the big nights, the love songs to your local that turn that trust into joy and motion.

The volume changes. The feeling does not.

Whether the pub is holding its breath for a ballad or roaring the chorus to Whiskey in the Jar, the same thing is happening underneath:

• People are finding each other.
• Songs are becoming markers in their shared story.
• A place is turning into a community.

That is the heart of Pints and Power. Not just how Guinness tastes, but how it gathers, and how music gives that gathering a voice.

Settle In: Keep the Story Going

If any part of this series felt familiar, if you have your own Whiskey in the Jar nights, your own bus trips, your own version of Closing Time, you are exactly who this project is for.

Settle in. This pint will not drink itself, and neither will these stories.