The Daily Spin, December 21
Calvin Harris | 18 Months
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite songs from each album right here.
Album: 18 Months (2012)
Artist: Calvin Harris
Link:
Remember the absolute chokehold this album had on the world for… oh, I don’t know, about 18 months back in 2012, 2013? I swear you couldn’t go more than two or three plays on the radio without hearing one of ‘I Need Your Love’, ‘Sweet Nothing’, ‘Feel So Close’, or ‘We Found Love’ - and oftentimes you got more than one at once.
It’s not bad - and I can absolutely see why it got the massive radio love that you did see a decade ago, as this was one of the first advents of modern dance into the popular scene, a continuation of love for synthetic voices from the late 2010s and the spark of a collision between dubstep and house forerunners and some of pop’s greatest stars.
It’s also incredibly dated, these days. Not in terms of any horrific slur or any outdated reference, but the music itself dates to a very specific time in the early 2010s where this sound was all the rage. It was a brief run of a couple years, the sort of sound that couldn’t have sustained. Harris is damn good at what he does, and it’s what has allowed him to stay near the forefront of modern dance pop for over a decade now, but it’s all the more clear that this was, at the time, a bit of a wild card.
The poppier tracks are fantastic, but it’s the dubstep itself that kinda misses for me, at least - I think this album was the one that proved, for me, that Harris needs collaborators for his sound to reach its greatest potential.
Rating: 7.5/10
Best Tracks: Sweet Nothing
Worst Tracks: Awooga