Songfacts®:

• This song was originally released by the Swedish dance singer Robyn in 2010; she wrote it with her fellow Swede, Patrik Berger. Robyn's version has an EDM flavor; Calum Scott turned it into a piano ballad.
  
  The song takes place at a club, where the singer watches the guy they like get intimate with a girl. Calum Scott is gay, so he kept the lyric from the original, pining for a guy. According to Scott, this suited him well because he would often fall for straight guys.
• "Dancing On My Own" was Calum Scott's first single. He posted it to YouTube in 2014, then he sang it on his audition for Britain's Got Talent in 2015. After sixth-place finish, Scott released it (appropriately) on his own in 2016. The song quickly found an audience and landed him a record deal with Capitol Records. With support from the label, the song reached an even wider audience and went all the way to #2 in the UK.
• A few months after Scott's version was released in 2016, a remix by Tiësto was issued, adding a dance beat to the song. This new version proved popular in clubs, where the song hit home for the lonely hearts on the dance floor.
• Both the original version and the Tiësto remix got music videos. The original, directed by Ryan Pallotta, is very 1984, with a group of identically dressed people staring at a wall. Finally, a guy and a girl move toward each other and make a connection as Scott looks on.
  
  The video for the Tiësto version is an interpretive dance by Haley Fitzgerald and Josh Killacky, who are both influencers as well as dancers.
• Scott is a big Robyn fan and really connected to the song. "I think you listen to the lyrics a little differently when you listen to Robyn's," he told 4Music. "With this version you have to sort of listen to it. It's a real emotional track. I make a lot of people cry."
• Scott included this song on his 2018 debut album, Only Human, which also includes "Rhythm Inside" and "You Are the Reason." In 2021, he had a huge hit with "Where Are You Now," a collaboration with the Belgian DJ Lost Frequencies.
• It's far from a jock jam, but the Tiësto remix of "Dancing On My Own" became an anthem for the Philadelphia Phillies, who played it after wins during their 2022 season when they reached the World Series (they lost to the Astros). It found its way to Philly via Kevin Plawecki, a backup catcher for the Boston Red Sox, who used it as his walkup music in 2020 during the pandemic, when games were played to empty stadiums. Some of his teammates got a kick out of it, and when the Red Sox won the American League division series in 2021, they played it in the locker room, generating lots of interest in the media. Robyn posted about it and threw out the first pitch in a game during the American League Championship Series at Boston's Fenway Park.
  
  Kyle Schwarber, a member of that Red Sox team, was traded to the Phillies in the offseason and brought the song with him to his new team, adding it to their postgame playlist. His teammates loved it, so the team started playing it after wins in their home stadium, resulting the strange sight of thousands of Phillies fans celebrating victories with a song about a lonely yearning for another man.
• Scott's version was a huge hit in the UK and quickly blew past Robyn's streaming totals for the song. In 2023, thanks to another playoff run by the Phillies, the song went over a billion streams on Spotify.