I Get All The Girls, I Get All The Girls.
Calvin Harris
(born Adam Richard Wiles, January 17, 1984) is a Scottish DJ and record producer. He first grew his interest of electronic dance music at a young age and began to record his first demos in his bedroom as a teenager. A couple of demos he posted on MySpace won him a major label deal in the mid-2000s, and he has since become a big name on the dance music scene. Calvin is known for his energetic, fizzy sounding electronic-dance music and a low, untrained voice that he utilizes on his tracks.
Discography:
- I Created Disco (2007)
- Ready for the Weekend (2009)
- 18 Months (2012)
- Motion (2014)
- Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 (2017)
- Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2 (2022)
When I troped you in the Summer:
- Album Title Drop: “I put on my shoes and I’m ready for the weekend".
- As Himself: The credits for the "Feels" music video list Calvin Harris, as well as the featured artists Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry, and Big Sean, all starring as themselves.
- Audience Participation Song: Whenever he's performing, Calvin will always ask the crowd to sing along to "Feel So Close", cutting the volume so that he can hear the audience. He has done similar antics with "Sweet Nothing", "We Found Love", and his remix of Fatboy Slim and Riva Starr's "Eat Sleep Rave Repeat" featuring Beardyman.
- The audience also loves to sing "I Need Your Love" and "Under Control" without Calvin's input.
- Boastful Rap: Not quite rapping, but Calvin does boast about how he gets all “The Girls” in one particular track.
- Tinie Tempah and Dizzee Rascal both provide very boastful raps on "Drinking From the Bottle" and "Here 2 China" respectively, rapping about drinking, drugs, ladies, and other things that entertain them.
- Big Sean attempts to do this in "Open Wide", but it falls down spectacularly.
- Common throughout the rap sections of Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 and 2.
- Tinie Tempah and Dizzee Rascal both provide very boastful raps on "Drinking From the Bottle" and "Here 2 China" respectively, rapping about drinking, drugs, ladies, and other things that entertain them.
- The Cover Changes the Gender: Dragonette’s cover of “The Girls”.
- It even includes a funny nod to the original, in which frontwoman Martina Sorbara notes that she likes “those scrawny, Scottish into pop music but not like sorta like pop dance electro music” boys.
- Creator Cameo: Has become somewhat of a staple in his music videos, as he prefers to not have a large role in an acting production. Examples include:
- He appears as a DJ in Rihanna's "We Found Love" video, as well as a couple of his own music videos such as "Let's Go" and "Bounce".
- Subverted in Dizzee Rascal's "Holiday" video. Calvin was supposed to briefly appear as a dancer in the video, but ultimately decided to walk off the set due to being unable to wear his signature Fly Eyes during the video, besides being uncomfortable dancing. However, Calvin does show up in Dizzee Rascal's "Dance Wiv Me" music video as a bartender.
- Appears as a boyfriend to an abusive girlfriend in "Outside", where he deals with Alien Geometries after she tries to throw a plate at him.
- Appears playing the guitar in both music videos for "Feels" and the piano in the video for "Faking It".
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Calvin's earlier work was reminiscent of early disco pop, and he sang on almost all of his own tracks. Ready For The Weekend also consisted of him singing on a huge majority of his tracks, though this time with a more modern (at least for 2009) feel.
- Electronic Music: One of the most prominent figures in the EDM boom of the late 2000s and early 2010s, alongside David Guetta and Skrillex.
- Fading into the Next Song: Ready For The Weekend has "The Rain" fade into...well, "Ready For The Weekend".
- On 18 Months, "Green Valley" does a well-done transition into "Bounce". Downplayed later in the album, when "We'll Be Coming Back" just barely fades into "Mansion", and can be easily missed if the listener doesn't pay attention and/or doesn't have the volume up on a higher level.
- Fanservice: His music videos are chock of these, both male and female.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Calvin is very close with his good friend and head of Fly Eye publishing company Charlie Tadman. To the point where Calvin starts filming him constantly on Snapchat because what he does is crazy. A similar relationship can be said with Mark Gillespie, Calvin's manager.
- In terms of collaborators, Calvin is constantly praising the work of John Newman, Dizzee Rascal, BURNS, R3hab, and Theo Hutchcraft of the group Hurts. Combined with their numerous collaborations together, this has lead to a close bond between all of them.
- House Music: Despite mostly making dance hits, Calvin has made some very groovy instrumentals that could be considered this. "Mansion", "School", "Awooga", and "Slow Acid" are some very prominent examples.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: At 6'5" (196 cm), he towers over many of his female collaborators. He was also a solid foot taller than his ex-girlfriend Rita Ora. In an interview with Ryan Seacrest, Calvin mentions that he's so tall that he could legally become a giant if he grew any taller.
- In Da Club: "Drinking From the Bottle". The music video of "Sweet Nothing" shows a more subdued strip club. "Open Wide" also counts.
- Making a Spectacle of Yourself: His pair of blinged-out sunglasses with a similar level of functionality to shutter shades; they've appeared on the covers of his first two albums, though he's seemed to have dropped it as of 18 Months. Starting with Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1, he appears to have swapped them out for red sunglasses.
- Mr. Fanservice: Calvin is the very definition of this trope, to the point where he's now the face of Armani. Need proof?◊
- Non-Appearing Title: Justified in some cases, due to him releasing some instrumental tracks such as "Burns Night" and "Mansion".
- New Sound Album: Funk Wav Bounces Vol 1 sees him transition from a traditional EDM artist to a DJ Khaled-like urban collaborator.
- Rags to Riches: Before he became a DJ, he worked at a fish factory and a poor-paying job stacking shelves in an old grocery store in Dumfries.
- Record Producer: He has most notably produced tracks for Kylie Minogue (“Heart Beat Rock”, “In My Arms”, “Cupid Boy”), Sophie Ellis-Bextor (“Off & On”) Dizzee Rascal (“Holiday” and “Dance Wiv Me”). He also produced Rihanna's hit singles "We Found Love" and "Where Have You Been", with the former becoming one of her biggest hits ever and her longest-reigning #1 single to date.
- Sexy Surfacing Shot: The music video for "How Deep Is Your Love" has a scene with Gigi Hadid diving and then emerging out of a pool in a bikini.
- Surreal Music Video: Played straight with "Ready for the Weekend", which has mirrors leading to other parts of the music video, Calvin jumping through holes in the floor that lead to different places, and is all-around just...bizarre.
- Happens during "Slow Acid", where, a woman painted entirely in blue starts stretching around the screen and turning into the album artwork before turning back to normal. This is all before said woman takes some kind of drug, robs a store, and kills a middle aged man who tries to use her as a prostitute. Surreal indeed.
- "Blame" has several girls fall into separate bodies of water at a party they were at, who then all end up in some jungle in the middle of nowhere.
- "Acceptable in the 80's" has several 80's style trends appearing throughout the video, with everybody dancing to the beat as they do some very strange things.
- Title-Only Chorus: While rare, Calvin has indeed created a few of these. Notable examples include "You Used to Hold Me" and "My Way".
- Word Salad Lyrics: Despite only having 5 lines in the song, Summer makes no sense when you put it into context.
Calvin himself has lampshaded this.- "Open Wide". The track has Big Sean rapping about his ex-wife and oral sex, and has no verses that make sense when put together.
- This was apparently the case with "We Found Love"; Calvin was trying to find words that sounded good with what he had produced. This turned out to be his greatest hit of 2012.
