Garrett Stubbs is hard at work looking for a viable replacement for ‘Dancing On My Own’

On February 17, 2023 as the Philadelphia Phillies reported to Clearwater, Florida for the start of Spring Training, a decision was made to ditch the 2022 postseason anthem “Dancing On My Own” from Garrett Stubbs’ now infamous Spotify playlist. 

At the time, Stubbs and a few other Phillies players told the media they were going to ditch “Dancing on My Own” because they “didn’t want to listen to second place songs”.

That changed relatively quickly…

After a slow start to the season, Nick Castellanos hopped on 97.5 The Fanatic and told radio host Andrew Salciunas that “Dancing On My Own” had returned to the Phillies’ locker room. 

June 2023: ‘Dancing On My Own’ BACK in the Phillies’ clubhouse

Nick Castellanos just told us on @975Middays that they brought back playing Dancing On My Own in the locker room after wins. Said they started playing it again during the Nationals series
pic.twitter.com/65BqXFA4DA

— Andrew Salciunas (@asalciunas975) June 13, 2023

At the time, Castellanos stated the Phillies started playing the song during the Washington Nationals series that started on June 2, 2023 and once the song started playing, numbers proved it was the perfect “reset” and what I considered the unofficial start of the MLB season on June 1st. 

The Phillies went on to post a 7-3 record to begin June and finished the month 18-8. Castellanos hit .351 with 34 hits, 5 home runs, 21 RBIs, and 12 runs scored during the month while his teammate Kyle Schwarber hit 8 home runs to go along with 16 RBI. 

“Dancing On My Own” proved yet again, it was the perfect recipe for this Phillies team in 2023, at least until NLCS Game 6 and Game 7.

No need to revisit that disaster any further, right? 

The Phillies tend to turn things on when June rolls around and as I mentioned above, finished the month with an 18-8 record while Castellanos and Schwarber both found their footing in a lineup that at the time was missing Bryce Harper. 

That brings us to 2024 Spring Training. The entire Phillies team has yet to report but Garrett Stubbs is already working diligently on replacing “Dancing On My Own” after 2023 didn’t yield the same World Series result as 2022. 

In a recent interview with Billboard.com, Stubbs was asked about his Spotify Playlist and any future plans to replace it. 

Garrett Stubbs on Phillies’ 2024 Anthem, Decision on ‘Dancing On My Own’

Have you thought about what the next in line song would be if “Dancing on My Own” wasn’t working anymore?

I mean, we’ve thought about it plenty, right? We tried to get rid of it this last year. And I don’t even wanna use the words “get rid of,” but we tried to move on from it and find something new and fresh. And we ended up reverting back to it. I think the fans have certain feelings about bringing it back in 2024, which I totally understand — when you don’t win the World Series, a lot of fans feel like it’s not a success. And us players feel the same way, too. But there has been a lot of success — not just with the song, but with the team for the past few years — so we do have a lot of really good memories, and I hope that eventually we just do find a new song that gives us a good vibe and a new good energy that people can connect with.

Do songs ever get nixed for being bad luck? Like if you hear a song before a big loss, or it’s the first song that gets played after a big loss, are you ever like, “All right, that song’s no longer part of the vibe, we gotta get it out of here?”

Well, so last year, we tried to get rid of “Dancing on My Own.” Which didn’t go very well at the beginning of the season. And so we ended up putting that back on. But we went through a number of different songs. I know that Juicy J was at one point getting played. I put on “Erryday” by Juicy J after wins. That quickly got axed. There was another J. Cole song that got played after wins — that was just a little too slow. And like, you’re looking around the league, there’s probably songs that get played that are in multiple locker rooms. So we try to keep it independent to ours. I’m sure at one point “All I Do Is Win” was just like the song that everyone played. 

Stubbs replacing DOMO will be no easy task. The city of Philadelphia, fans, and the Phillies themselves catapulted Calum Scott’s version to over 1 BILLION STREAMS on Spotify over the past two years and Scott himself said that if the Phillies do manage to win a World Series, he would perform it live at the parade. 

Just think about the pressure you’re under to put on a good Spotify playlist in the car with friends, golfing, or at a party. Mix in the fact that this Phillies team is supposed to be winning a lot of baseball games and that’s a shit ton of responsibility. 

Listen, I was never really a fan of the song. It was beaten to death in the 2022 postseason and if we’re being totally honest about it, it wasn’t really that great to begin with. If anything it was more funny because a bunch of professional baseball players were listening to a remix of a classic Robyn song while getting absolutely obliterated and winning baseball games. 

The song sucks, but if the results are there, it’s hard to argue against it. 

Spring Training Merch

Join The Chase