How Garrett Stubbs Became The Phillies’ Clubhouse DJ

In his two seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies, catcher Garrett Stubbs has played in just 87 of a possible 324 games — par for the course when you’re backing up J.T. Realmuto, commonly referred to by Phillies fans as the “BCIB” (Best Catcher in Baseball). But despite his limited time on the field, Stubbs has become one of the most beloved and recognizable Phils for his role as the team’s preeminent Clubhouse Guy — as well as their anointed post-game DJ.

With the Phils’ locker room turning into Philadelphia’s hottest club over their five playoff series victories across 2022-23, Stubbs has also become one of the city’s most influential aux-cord wielders with his celebratory selections, collected in his publicly available “Phils Win” Spotify playlist (nearly 30,000 likes). The most famous of the bunch, Tiësto’s remix of Calum Scott’s cover of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” caught so much local heat after it became the Phils’ unlikely postseason anthem in 2022, which propelled the song back onto the Billboard charts, making the Digital Song Sales top 10 last October.

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Below, Stubbs talks with Billboard about how he became The Guy for soundtracking the team’s champagne-soaked celebrations, as well as why his club loves a good dance remix, and whether they’ll ever be able to get away from “Dancing on My Own.”

How did you become the sort of official team DJ/Spotify playlist curator here?

Somebody’s gotta do it, and I’d say because my role on the team as far as playing time goes is limited, I just became the guy who came into the locker room after the games to turn on the music. As guys started to like certain songs, I just started to accumulate the ones that everyone liked and put them into a playlist. And then slowly but surely, there ended up being 1, 2, 20, 50, 100 songs on the playlist.

Over the past couple years, who else on the team have been your supporting curators?

Schwarbs [Kyle Schwarber] is a big one. He’s certainly a guy that brings good vibes to the locker room. [Nick] Castellanos is another one. He’s got very eclectic taste in music — he’s a huge J. Cole fan and likes to play anything from rap all the way to ODESZA. And he is a big fan of those two — if you walk into the locker room and either one of those two is playing, he definitely got ahold of the sticks.

Do you need a sort of quorum of team approval to put a song on the playlist? Are there any times that you try to sneak one on that you like — or do you need to have, like, a couple co-signs before you put one on the official team playlist? 

No, I put random songs on there all the time. [Laughs.] So I generally will just like a song and put it on there, and then it’ll play in the locker room at certain times of the day, or after the game, and when the song comes on, I’ll just around the locker room and see what vibe I’m getting from everybody. And if it’s good, it stays, and if it’s not good, it gets taken off quickly.

Do you remember any times you got a particularly bad response to a song you were excited about?

Not so much a bad response — I mean, sometimes guys get over songs. Like we have Waka Flocka [Flame] on there — Schwarbs is a big Waka Flocka fan, so he will put Waka Flocka on there. And at times, if we get too much Waka, it gets worn out quickly. But there are other songs on there that come and go as post-game music. But the top four songs are always [Shouse’s] “Love Tonight,” [Calum Scott’s cover of] “Dancing on My Own,” [Trey Lewis’] “D–ked Down in Dallas” and then [Alabama’s] “Dixieland Delight.”

But we make trades during the year, right? And we try to make guys feel comfortable as soon as they get over. And that’s how “Dixieland Delight” got on there. We got D-Rob [David Robertson] traded over from the Cubs, and he was an Alabama guy, so we quickly put on “Dixieland Delight.” And it ended up sticking in 2023! But it’s just a good way of getting guys connected — especially, like, Latin players who there’s a language barrier with. So we have Latin songs on there as well, for people to enjoy.

Do you add to it in the offseason?

No, I’ll listen to new music all the time. Unfortunately I feel like there hasn’t been a ton of great music coming out. I don’t know how you feel about that, but…

Well, you’re working for a very specific purpose — maybe people like the new Lana Del Rey album, but I’m sure that’s not gonna make it onto the post-game playlist. 

No doubt. Yeah. I’ve been listening to — there’s a lot of good country music that comes out, but like you said, it’s not necessarily the vibe after a win to listen to friggin’ Chris Stapleton or like, a slow Morgan Wallen song or something. But we had big Dua Lipa love in 2022, starting with Kyle Gibson. And so the “Cold Heart” song got put on there. And that’s kind of the vibe we like to go 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.

We try to stay away from the superstition part. Like, playing “Dancing on My Own” after wins isn’t a superstition for us — it’s just a good vibe. Everyone seems to be having a smile on their face. But also the connection that we got to have with the fans during that was pretty cool.

So I’m sure you’ve talked about it a million times by now, but when did you know that “Dancing on My Own” was connecting in that way? 

Well, the funny thing is that all the music that got played in the locker room, not that it wasn’t supposed to get out of the locker room, but that was certainly not the intent at first. We basically were just playing certain songs, I started curating a playlist honestly just to make it easy to play the songs after the game — we could just click play on the playlist and then it would run through all the songs. At no point did I think the entire city was going to find my Spotify! And then realize that there was a “Phils Win” playlist. And then next thing I know, there was 1,000 people liking it, 5,000, 10,000, I think it’s up to like 20 or 25,000 now…

You’re almost up to 30 now.  

OK, yeah. So that wasn’t the intent out the gate. But I think it’s a cool way for fans to kinda get a taste of what goes on in the locker room. I think fans enjoy seeing that side of our team. I think they also see that outside of the music, just how we interact with each other on the field. And we have a very unique, fun way of connecting with the people of Philly.

That song specifically, though — when did you know that that was going to be the song that people most associated with you guys?

I don’t think we ever thought that people were going to associate themselves with it outside the locker room. I think we just kinda felt like it was a good vibe when we were listening to it inside the locker room. And then, very quickly, people found out that that was our song inside the locker room, and then they started connecting with it. That kind of just happened organically, which — I think that’s how the best things in life happen, right? You don’t really intend for them to be a certain way, but just over time, people just get drawn to a certain thing.

In general, just the vibe, the feeling that you get when you hear the song, is upbeat — Tiësto did a great job remixing it because obviously the original is a little slower. So I think the remix gives a good vibe, and all of a sudden you kinda get your head bobbin’, and it gives you good feelings inside, with the association of the winning part of it, along with just the sound that you get from listening to the song, is always positive.

I did notice, skimming the top of the playlist — and I’ve heard it in the locker room too — there’s a lot of dance remixes of non-dance songs. That seems to kind of be a sweet spot for you guys.  

Yeah, I personally love bringing a little bit of house vibe to an old song. Seeing some of these new artists grabbing really great classics, and then remixing them with a little more modern house sounds that you weren’t necessarily able to make when they were making those songs, I really enjoy it.

So with 30,000 people following this playlist, do you ever hear it outside the locker room?

Well, after we would win we would go over to Xfinity Live, and immediately the DJ would start playing every single song from the playlist. We would celebrate in the locker room, and then afterwards we would go to Xfinity and celebrate again, and they would bring out those same songs. It was always fun watching the reaction of the fans to certain songs. My favorite song on the playlist [laughs] to have fun with is “D–ked Down in Dallas.”

I mean “Dancing on My Own” is obviously an incredible song, and associated with the whole city. But “D–ked Down in Dallas” is just such a fun song for all of us to have fun to, and whenever we’d go to Xfinity and watch everyone else sing along with it, it was hilarious to us.

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.

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