Being Calvin Harris is a pretty good gig. The DJ/producer/object of the female gaze gets to spend his days oiling his abs, petting Taylor Swift’s cat, and pressing play on an iTunes playlist, aka DJing. As long as human beings love to half-dance to incomprehensible aphorisms layered over a handful of beats, Harris has got it made. Plus, even if Swift breaks up with him, he’ll probably land a sweet alimony like Joe Jonas—a Tay Tay-approved Victoria’s Secret model, possibly even a Hadid!
In order to continue on this blessed path, all Harris had to do was keep up with his core workout and keep his pretty mouth shut. Naturally, Harris was incapable of keeping his pretty mouth shut. Oh, Calvin—you’re fine but you’re dumb.
The trouble started on Monday, when the DJ-turned-white knight rode in on 140 characters, hell-bent on defending his girlfriend from the scourge of a Zayn Malik retweet. The former One Direction member and current silver fox had echoed a Twitter user’s critique of Taylor Swift’s famous Spotify feud.
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Harris proceeded to go off with the ignorant confidence of a white boy who is essentially surrounded by the three walls of a DJ booth at all times: “You’ve made your money? Cool...fuck the 99% of musicians who depend on these services to survive right? Yeah fuck em…If u don’t get what it means when a successful artist uses their celebrity to benefit every other musician and songwriter in the industry ...stay out my fuckin mentions pls…While u kids are refresh voting teen choice awards there’s some poor fucker in a basement making your new favorite record trying to survive… Meaning...stay out of things you don’t understand.”
Malik quickly shut Harris down by implying that he was old and quite possibly addled. He also called him a “dickhead.” Harris admitted defeat, wishing Malik the “best of luck” before waddling home to binge-eat Swift’s latest batch of gluten-free cookies and dampen Olivia Benson’s fur with his EDM tears (Olivia Benson is the name of Taylor Swift’s cat, which makes this fantasy either more or less weird).
In going after tween mascot Zayn Malik, Harris forgot the old adage “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” Or in Harris’s case, don’t piss off the social media illuminati if you are an idiot on social media. Like adorable little miners with Instagram accounts and popular Tumblr pages, scorned One Directioners started digging up old school Harris gems: racist Instagrams, dating faux pas, and misogynistic comments. We sorted through this bouquet of douchebaggery and picked out some choice examples of Harris’s most unappealing behavior. Somewhere in L.A./New York/Rhode Island, Taylor Swift and Olivia Benson are popping Xanax and blasting “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”
Let’s start with the big ones. Calvin Harris and singer Rita Ora broke up back in June 2014, after a yearlong romance. In August, Ora confirmed that her ex had shut down her scheduled performance of “I Will Never Let You Down” at the Teen Choice Awards. Because Harris produced and penned the single, it was well within his rights to block the performance from going forward—but in layman’s terms, it was a dick move. Despite admitting to Ryan Seacrest that she was upset, Ora took her disappointment in stride, saying, “The show was going to be awesome...[but] everything happens for a reason, that’s how I look at it.” Harris, on the other hand, responded like an irritable, teething baby: “You’ll only know 1 side of the story RE Teen choice awards because I choose not to talk to the papers about every aspect of my personal life…But just know I had a damn good reason.”
And this edition of the Calvin Harris ex files just gets shadier. The day before the Brit Awards, Harris was spotted lounging on the beach with his girlfriend of seven months, model Aarika Wolf. At the Awards, Harris was photographed with Taylor Swift, amidst gossip that they spent the entire evening together, “holding hands” and “getting very cozy.”
It would have been easy to dismiss the rumors as baseless tabloid fodder… if Harris hadn’t proceeded to break up with his girlfriend “around the time of the Brits.” According to a source on the split, “Calvin is always really busy…so he’s happy to be single for a while.” If by “single” you mean, “romantically involved with Taylor Swift, the world’s most public and monogamous girlfriend.” Oh, and prior to dating T. Swift, Harris went on the record claiming that she was the “opposite” of his type.
In addition to being the world’s shadiest ex-boyfriend (pour one out for Calvin Harris’s Lulu profile), the DJ has also pissed off other celebs without even dating them first. In 2012, Harris boasted about turning Lady Gaga down for a collaboration. Gaga quickly set the record straight on Twitter: “never even emailed you @calvinharris I guess it’s hard to believe I write + produce my music. cuz I’m a woman I don’t know about EDM right?”
Fellow female artist (and noted Taylor Swift nemesis) Katy Perry was next up at bat, tweet-berating Harris for cancelling last minute on her Teenage Dream tour, reportedly due to issues with the set arrangements. Perry complained that @CalvinHarris “will NOT be joining in on the fun and has CANCELLED last minute…it’s fine, I’m used to you canceling on me, it’s become ur staple!”
Online vigilantes have rounded out the Harris hall of shame with a series of throwback Tweets and Instagrams that feature the DJ’s original misogynistic, racist, and fat-shaming content.
Harris has also copped to changing his name in order to exploit the racial ambiguity of his DJ moniker, admitting, “My first single was more of a soul track, and I thought Calvin Harris sounded a bit more racially ambiguous. I thought people might not know if I was black or not. After that, I was stuck with it.” Additionally, he drew an unflattering picture of what appears to be Sam Smith with a dick on his head.
Takes one to know one, Harris.
