Calvin Harris – ‘The Rain’

People give this guy too much shit. Admittedly, Scotland’s Calvin Harris has become a bit of a prima donna of late, what with the Human Synth Project, the OTT explosions at British Phonographic authorities (read that expletive-laden tirade here, but there’s no need to trash his new album just because he’s taking a punt at the big leagues. Cutting through the fog of hyperbole, hype and song leaking, having listened to sophomore release Ready For the Weekend back to front, I can assure you that it is not nearly as awful as people like this guy have been making out. What Harris is dealing with is a backlash from a bunch of textbook indie-rock nerds who, with the success of Calvin’s gold-selling debut, I Created Disco, thought they’d officially found a way to re-enter normal society. But Weekend, with it’s huge synth lines, crazy disco bass and dancefloor-ready production is one album destined to sit in the Top 40 for a long while, thus taking the geek chic Harris away from his original fans and catapulting him into another stratosphere. Personally, I think it’s about fucking time – the guy clearly has the chops and he didn’t showcase them all that well on his first outing. So why not go all out?

The Guardian probably gave Harris the biggest lashing, labelling the new album as ‘handbag house’, which one assumes is a term of derision meant to indicate that the music is so dumb that even blonde socialites can get in on it. While I agree that Harris has most definitely pandered to mainstream sensibilities, he’s done it in an extremely musical way. He’s stopped trying to be a rock star, which was never going to happen, put all the necessary tricks on his vocals, roped in some big-voiced honeys for the choruses and blown the budget of a small African nation on keyboards. what’s the problem with that? Inasmuch as we all love feel-good musicians taking a turn toward the dark side (see Arctic Monkey’s latest, Humbug for more of that), it’s not a crime to write catchy, even cheesy electro music. Fuck, most producers don’t even write their own melodies, they just craft beats. Harris does it all, it’s right there in the liner notes (which downloaders won’t get to read) and you have to give him credit, because many of these songs are really quite brilliant. This is the guy who penned ‘Dance Wiv Me’, the biggest hit of last year, turning Dizzee Rascal into an international superstar in the process. He doesn’t do things by halves.

Ultimately, what gets on my nerves is that great songs like ‘The Rain’ will be all over blogs, but probably dropped by the radio when they see all these negative reviews. I need not remind you that Tiesto, Dave Guetta and a whole lot of other supposedly ‘intelligent’ DJ/producers have all ‘sold out’ of late, far more than Harris ever has or will. When the Scotsman calls on Akon for a single, or decides to duet with Sneaky Sound System, I’ll start running for the hills. Until then, he’s done more for his dying genre than most of his contemporaries have in ten years. So cut the dude some slack, he’s done very well.

PS – Calvin’s not taking the criticism lying down. Check this brilliant tweet from last week: “FUCK YOU RICH PEOPLE YOU WILL NOT BREAK ME I DON’T GIVE A FUCK I HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE YOU ARE ONLY RICH PEOPLE”

That’s all there is to it, really.

Calvin Harris – ‘The Rain’

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