Review - Calvin Harris - Motion

Dance music is pop music and pop music is dance music, so while I’m sure it’ll land in the dance/electronic category at the Grammys, this seems like something a pop blog should cover.

Calvin Harris has proven himself to be one of the biggest and most reliable hitmakers in the business, churning out smash after smash. He’s done well in the US for sure, but that claim stands up even better in the UK, where his last album, 18 Months, was the first to chart nine top ten hits from one album.

Motion doesn’t even come out for a few more days, but already it’s on single number four (a bad sign for many artists, but not for the prolific Harris) three number ones, and there are plenty more big hits are waiting in the weeds.

While it is more of the same, Motion is definitely a step down from his last album in almost every way. It’s tough to see an artist put out almost identical albums, so he’s already starting at a loss there. Even the singles he’s released thus far haven’t packed the punch that his corresponding ones did a few years ago. “Summer” may have been an appropriately-timed radio tune, but it wasn’t on par with “Feel So Close”. “Blame (ft. John Newman)” is nowhere near as good as the Florence Welch-featuring “Sweet Nothing”, and “Under Control”, the first single from the album, is about as generic as you can get.

Will you dance to this? Sure. Are you going to hear it on the radio for the next year? Definitely. It’s going to be a success, but it’s kind of a shame to see one of the world’s biggest DJs copy pasting from his previous work. Although, he’s done this before, and it makes him an insane amount of money and has gotten an incredible reaction from the public, so, can we really blame him?

Listen to: “Pray To God (ft. HAIM)”, “Burnin (ft. R3hab)”, and “Dollar Signs (ft. Tinashe)”

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