Dumfries, Scotland · dance · electro-house

Calvin Harris

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Scotland's biggest pop export from behind a DJ booth: fifteen years of chart-defining dance singles, from 'Feel So Close' to the Funk Wav collaborations.

Calvin Harris is Adam Wiles, born in Dumfries in 1984 to English parents; his father worked as a biochemist. He attended Calside Primary School and Dumfries High School, then stocked supermarket shelves and worked in a fish processing factory to save for DJ equipment, recording bedroom demos from his mid-teens onward.

He put his first tracks online before signing a deal. His 2007 debut, I Created Disco, had him singing his own songs in a deliberately cheap synth-pop style, led by the singles Acceptable in the 80s and The Girls, both hits in Europe and Australia. His second album, Ready for the Weekend, gave him his first UK number one single, I'm Not Alone.

He stopped fronting records not long after and became a producer whose name sat above the vocalist's on the label, starting with We Found Love for Rihanna. His third album, 18 Months, became his first to chart in the US and produced nine UK top ten singles, more than any other album had managed before.

From there came a run of singles built for large rooms: Summer, This Is What You Came For, Slide with Frank Ocean and Migos, One Kiss with Dua Lipa, spread across the albums Motion and the two Funk Wav Bounces volumes. He holds the record for the most UK number-one singles by any act during the 2010s.

Live, he works as a DJ rather than a band leader, and he held long residencies in Las Vegas through the 2010s while the records kept coming.

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danceelectro-house