Ever since he first emerged in 2007, Calvin Harris has seemed to live his life in the spotlight. He might not have chosen it that way, but a combination of his accessible dance-pop beats, media-baiting personality and occasional PR wobbles have all made it so. Even the title of his debut album, I Created Disco, was an immediate talking point before anyone ever heard it. Clearly, this 29-year-old Scotsman from Dumfries did not invent disco, an in fact you could argue he wasn’t even born when the best of the genre was being made.

In 2007, though, disco wasn’t in the spotlight in the same way it is in 2013, where you can nary browse the internet without seeing Chic’s Nile Rodgers pop up with a new high-profile collaboration. As such, a better title might have been I Rejuvenated Disco, but whatever way you look at it the album itself was a global success. It soon went gold, bolstered by Top 10 singles Acceptable In The 80s and The Girls, which combined electroclash beats with anthemic hooks and plenty of cheery pop swagger. Harris’ place in the modern pop pantheon was assured.

Two years later came the follow-up, Ready For The Weekend, which courted controversy 12 months before it even came out. The story goes that Harris had been working on the album for seven months and had only one version saved on his laptop. Said laptop was then reportedly lost at Heathrow airport. Except the laptop wasn’t in the bag. Harris later came clean and said he concocted the story to buy himself more time to complete the album. He confessed, “The thing about Heathrow wasn’t so much a lie, as, well, an untruth.”

When the album did eventually arrive in August 2009 it debuted at No 1 in the UK charts, went gold and spawned a number of top ten singles. Harris’s sole aim, it seemed, was to bottle up some of that excitement felt in your average middle England party person, nothing more, nothing less, and serve it up in a glossy sing-along framework. It worked.

Harris’s own stranglehold on the charts has barely let up since. As well as the odd solo offering, he has teamed up with big names from many different genres including Ne-Yo, Example and Florence Welch from Florence + The Machine. His most recent album, 18 Months, was jam-packed with readymade No 1s and was bolstered by another dizzying array of stars including Rihanna, Ellie Goulding, Tinie Tempah and Dizzee Rascal.

Harris’ fame has led pop stars to come calling for his services, from Cheryl Cole to Kylie Minogue, Scissor Sisters and Mary J Blige. He’s also clocked up a number of awards, most recently an Ivor Novello for Songwriter Of The Year. He may be something of a pop bad boy, then, but when it comes to his music, it seems the world just can’t get enough.

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