Music

Whether you view this as a compliment or an insult is up to you, but those self-consciously trendy types at ID magazine have described Calvin Harris as ‘the next globe-crushing dance overlord’. This isn’t a huge surprise, as everything Harris does – from his Prince-with-added-bouncy-’80s-keyboards aesthetic, to his oh-so-wry wordplay (‘Merry making!/Drug taking!/At my place, baby, at my place!’), to his very song titles (‘Acceptable In The ’80s’, ‘Neon Rocks’) – seems unashamedly aimed at people with far cooler hair and clothes than we mere mortals. The sort of people who hang out at places we can only dream of getting into but who are also, like, sniggering at superficiality, too.

Certainly, the young Scot knows how to construct a Shoreditch-circa-2001 club banger, but this competence is overridden by the endless semi-ironic, too-cool-for-school delivery. On just-released single ‘The Girls’, for example, he nonchalantly chants, ‘I like them black girls/I like them white girls/I like them Asian girls/I like them mixed-race girls’. In fact, if you find that hilarious, this may well be your album of the year. If, however, it makes you want to hit the streets with a machete in search of wackily dressed, super-aloof yoof, then – hey! – you’re welcome at our house any time.