What would every Philly mascot’s Taylor Swift theme song be?

Ahead of Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated three-night tour stop in Philadelphia, locals’ TikTok For You Pages are drowning in content around a specific request: get Gritty on stage with Taylor.

Perhaps better known nationally than his actual team, Gritty has earned a reputation on the internet as a meme, an LGBTQ icon, and an all-around agent of chaos.

On TikTok, some locals say they want to see the mascot brought out as one of Swift’s special guests. Others say they want to see Gritty doing the popular “chair dance” choreography — a Cabaret-inspired number Swift dances during her performance of “Vigilante S—.”

The online conversation got us thinking: What about other Philly mascots? What Swift songs are on their playlists? Which tracks would soundtrack their walkouts? Here’s our best guess at each local mascot’s Taylor Swift theme song.

Obviously. Based on the name alone, the track of Swift’s latest album, Midnights, feels like a natural fit. We can see it playing while Gritty throws a cake at a Flyers fan, steals a rival fan’s hat, or threatens the Pittsburgh Penguins. One line from the song, in particular, seems to capture Gritty’s essence appropriately:

Indeed, Gritty — who fans insist is nonbinary — doesn’t dress for men or women and absolutely has been dressing for revenge since the mascot’s 2018 debut, where fans initially cast doubt on him. He dressed for revenge when he recreated Kim Kardashian’s “break the internet” photoshoot, he dressed for revenge when he donned a Rocky outfit, and he dresses for revenge every night when he suits up for a Flyers game and gets ready to raise some hell.

Among local fans, there’s been a longtime theory that this song gives a nod to the Philadelphia Eagles. One of Swift’s lyrics in “gold rush” mentions her Eagles T-shirt hanging from the door. People who live literally anywhere else surmise that the lyric is referencing the band. But we know better. And so does Swoop. Beyond the shoutout to his team, “gold rush” also has a mention about flying — obviously a thing eagles (and Eagles) do. No further questions.

You’ll never find another like him — except a short-lived Phake Phillie.

In 2020, the Phillie Phanatic was the subject of a copyright dispute in which his original creators wanted to renegotiate copyright ownership and the baseball team sued them. While things were getting hashed out off the field, the Phillies benched the OG Phanatic and subbed in a slightly altered pinch hitter with a slightly different appearance — feathery eyelashes, a shorter snout, etc. — to avoid copyright issues.

But by 2022, following a settlement between the team and the mascot’s creators, the original Phanatic was back at Citizens Bank Park. Gone but not forgotten, if the Phake Phillie had a song, we suspect it would be “All Too Well (10-minute version),” a ballad about remembering an old relationship that didn’t work out.

This reminds us of Swift’s single “ME!,” a track that reminds fans that the singer is often imitated but never duplicated. We could fully see Phanatic singing “I promise that you’ll never find another like me ... I’m the only one of me,” if he had a voice.

Poor Franklin. It’s not his fault, but stacked up against personalities like Gritty, the Sixers’ dog mascot is just, sort of, there.

Sixers fans appear to rarely interact with the mascot, which was introduced in 2016. He replaced Hip-Hop, a motorcycle-riding rabbit who had a bit of an edge and fake muscles inside his morph suit. Hip-Hop was “retired” — he moved to the ‘burbs to start a family according to official team communications — in 2011. After that, Franklin the blue dog came on the scene.

Still, Franklin’s been met by an underwhelmed audience.

“It’s rare that a mascot is less interesting than the animal it represents, however the 76ers mascot Franklin is undeniably less fun, creative, or interesting than any dog painted blue,” local alternative news outlet The Philly Plain Dealer said.

For that reason, Swift’s I Forgot That You Existed, about a forgettable figure (in Swift’s case a guy, in our case, a blue dog), feels like the right match.

A snake? At least try to make this difficult for us. Phang’s theme song is clearly “Are You Ready For It” off Swift’s Reputation. The Reputation era was full of snake imagery and marked the singer’s full lean into her beef with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.

“A couple of years ago, someone called me a snake on social media and it caught on,” Swift said during her Reputation tour to explain why there were so many snakes on stage. “And I guess the snakes, I wanted to send a message to you guys that if someone uses name-calling to bully you on social media and even if a lot of people jump on board with it, that doesn’t have to defeat you. It can strengthen you instead.”

Appropriately, a repeating lyric in Are You Ready for It? is “let the games begin,” which feels right for a Union game.

Katie Krzaczek and Erin Gavle contributed to this story.