After a win on Sunday, fans of the Philadelphia Phillies MLB franchise are celebrating the club’s first World Series appearance since 2009. The Phillies faithful have climbed up stoplights, and even gotten a shoutout from first lady Dr Jill Biden, but there’s one slightly surprising group that’s not so happy: fans of Swedish pop star Robyn.
The MLB club has been playing her 2010 hit “Dancing on My Own” as a pump-up anthem, but a cover version rather than the original.
After a video of the team celebrating their series-clinching win against the San Diego Padres in the NL Championship attracted hundreds of thousands of views, Robyn fans are demanding the team switch to the original track, rather than the version they’ve been using, a 2016 remix by Tiësto of an acoustic cover by artist Calum Scott.
One fan wrote on social media that the Phillies are committing “Robyn erasure,” while another asked, “Can we agree there’s only one version of ‘Dancing on My Own and it’s Robyn’”?
The singer hasn’t commented on the MLB team’s embrace of her song yet, though a few Robyn fans were glab the Phillies have chosen the song as their jam this postseason.
“The #Phillies celebration song being ‘Dancing On My Own’ by Robyn is incredible,” they wrote on Twitter. “You have 40 year old straight dudes driving around the city blasting a Swedish gay disco club anthem and I’m obsessed.”
Phillies catcher Garrett Stubbs told MLB.com earlier this month that he has become the go-to DJ in the locker room, and there’s no big story about why the team loves the song so much.
“There’s no deeper meaning or backstory to it, other than it’s an absolute banger and we love singing it in the locker room,” he said. “After a win, we play ‘Dancing on My Own,’ ‘Cold Heart’ and a couple other ones. We’ve been playing those songs since the beginning of the season. They come on in order after wins, so everyone knows what songs are going to play and everyone knows the words to those songs.”
It seems the song is irresistible to big-league sluggers.
Last year, the Boston Red Sox made it one of their signature locker room tracks.
Like the Phillies, the Sox chose the Tiësto remix.
Mr Scott’s cover of the song got wide exposure in 2015 when he appeared on Britain’s Got Talent.
A year later, the EDM star put out his remix.
Outside of the unexpected Swedish pop fandom, Sunday’s playoff series was notable for a few other reasons.
It marks a chance for the Phillies to get just the third World Series win in 140 years, and is the first MLB title race under the league’s new expanded playoff system.
Phillies designated hitter Bryce Harper, who clinched the game with a home run, is on a 13-year, $330m deal, the largest in baseball history for a free agency.
