Calvin Harris

Calvin Harris started out making songs alone in his bedroom in Dumfries and posting them online. By 2013 he had produced a ten-week US No. 1 for Rihanna, broken a Michael Jackson chart record and started a long residency in Las Vegas.

Bedroom demos and MySpace

Born Adam Richard Wiles on 17 January 1984, Harris began recording demos in his bedroom in 1999. In early 2002 he released two tracks, “Da Bongos” and “Brighter Days”, under the name Stouffer on the label Prima Facie. Back in Dumfries, he put his own songs on MySpace. That led to a management deal with Mark Gillespie and, in 2006, to contracts with Three Six Zero for management, EMI for publishing and Sony BMG for records.

I Created Disco and the first No. 1s

His debut album, I Created Disco, came out in June 2007. Harris wrote, produced and performed all 14 tracks, recording them on an Amiga computer. It reached No. 8 in the UK and went gold. “Acceptable in the 80s” peaked at No. 10 and “The Girls” at No. 3. The same year he co-wrote and produced “Heart Beat Rock” and “In My Arms” for Kylie Minogue’s album X.

In 2008 “Dance wiv Me”, with Dizzee Rascal, spent four weeks at No. 1 in the UK. A year later “I’m Not Alone” gave him his first No. 1 as lead artist, and its album, Ready for the Weekend, entered the UK chart at No. 1. In March 2010 he launched his own label, Fly Eye Records.

We Found Love and the 18 Months record

The move to stadium-sized dance-pop came with Rihanna. “We Found Love” (2011) spent ten non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, his first US No. 1. “Feel So Close” reached No. 12 in the US. Then came 18 Months, released on 29 October 2012. It topped the UK albums chart and produced nine UK top-10 singles, beating Michael Jackson’s record of seven from one album. Ed Sheeran broke Harris’s record in March 2017.

Las Vegas, Motion and Funk Wav Bounces

In February 2013 Harris began a 20-month exclusive residency at Hakkasan, in the MGM Grand, Las Vegas: 46 dates. In January 2015 the deal was extended for three years and widened to Omnia at Caesars Palace. Motion (2014) entered at No. 2 in the UK and No. 5 in the US; its single “Summer” was a UK No. 1 and reached No. 7 in the US. In 2014 he also became head of A&R at Deconstruction Records, the label that had released Black Box’s “Ride on Time” in the UK in 1989.

“This Is What You Came For” (2016), again with Rihanna and co-written with Taylor Swift, reached No. 3 in the US. Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 (2017) slowed things down, with guests such as Frank Ocean and Migos on “Slide”; it peaked at No. 2 in both the UK and the US. “One Kiss” with Dua Lipa followed in April 2018.

Love Regenerator and the club side

In August and September 2019 Harris played a six-week Friday residency at Ushuaïa Ibiza. In 2020 he went back to the club under a new alias, Love Regenerator, with three EPs; the third came out on 13 March 2020. Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2 followed in August 2022, and 96 Months, a career compilation, in August 2024.

For the other side of the 2011 dance-pop boom, read the story of David Guetta and Sia’s “Titanium”, and Kesha’s “We R Who We R” from the months before.