What’s that song the Phillies sang in the locker room Saturday night?
It’s a Tiësto remix of a cover of a Robyn song sung by Calum Scott
When the champagne celebration of the Phillies’ wild-card round victory over the St. Louis Cardinals broke out Saturday night, the team formed a circle in the visitors’ locker room while Bryce Harper and J.T. Realmuto led them in song.
“I’m in the corner, watching you kiss her, I’m right over here, why can’t you see me?” the deliriously joyful players belted in unison. “I’m still dancin’ on my own.”
Am I hearing that right? Philly sports fans clued in to Swedish pop music were made to wonder: Are the Fightin’ Phils really celebrating their first playoff victory in 12 years by singing Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own”?
They were. But not exactly, actually. The version the players belted out at the top of their lungs was not Robyn’s original hit single from her 2010 album, Body Talk, Pt. 1.
Instead, it was the remix by the Dutch DJ Tiësto of a cover of the song by Calum Scott, an English singer who first performed it as a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent, in 2015. It went on to become the best-selling single in the United Kingdom the following summer.
Because of its British success, Scott’s version has been played more 950 million times on Spotify. Robyn’s version has a mere 267 million.
But to American fans, Robyn is much better-known than Scott, and “Dancing on My Own” is her signature song. The song established her as an alt-pop star, formerly signed to a major label, who became a fiercely independent artist and hero for indie fans whose tastes lie outside the mainstream.
It’s a song about heartbreak and isolation. But it’s also about self-empowerment and resiliency, the latter a word associated with the Phillies team that got off to a woeful start under then-manager Joe Girardi before turning the season around under then-interim skipper Rob Thomson.
In June 2020, Robyn went viral with a video shot in quarantine of her singing — and dancing — on her own, holding a selfie-stick. Maybe the song’s anxiety about disconnection — or about a sports team feeling disrespected — resonated during the early days of the pandemic. Its combination of emotional, heartsick lyrics and euphoric energy helped turn it into — as Vice puts it — an “undeniable queer banger.”
This isn’t, however, the first time the song found fans among athletes. “Dancing on My Own” crossed over into Major League Baseball in 2020, when Boston Red Sox catcher Kevin Plawecki started using it as his walkup music in games played in an empty Fenway Park.
By last year, Plawecki converted the rest of the team to the charms of the song, and when the Sox beat the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2021 American League division series, the team played it in the locker room.
Robyn herself posted a video of the celebration, captioned “Bonkers.” Scott threw out a ceremonial first pitch at Fenway before a Sox game in the American League Championship Series against the Houston Astros.
Fans can now dance on their own (or in groups) to the song as it rings throughout Rittenhouse Square during this current postseason run at 12:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., twice a day.