Calvin Harris has released a video showing us how he made his latest single bit-by-bit

Just look at that hunk of a man up there. What a specimen.

It’s a far cry from the ‘Jam TV’ days of geeky Calvin, when he’d indulge in awkwardly playing a double-bass-cum-synthesizer, regaling us with tales of his former employment in M&S on Twitter and interrupting a Jedward performance on the X Factor by running onstage with a pineapple on his head.

But we digress.

While Calvin may be very handsome these days, so much so that it led to a brief sojourn into a highly-public A-list romance with Taylor Swift, one of the pleasing things about him is that his main passion still seems to be music. Just making music, and making great tunes. Yes, he’s worth squillions, has already written more massive anthems than you can shake a (drum) stick at and is a bona fide celebrity, but he seems happy just being in a studio and banging out big tunes.

The evidence? These tweets in February:

Amen brother. And he’s also come good on this tweet:

In more spectacular style than we were expecting.

Instead of mere liner notes, he’s gone the whole hog and posted up a video which fascinatingly shows all of the parts from his latest track, the sunset disco track ‘Slide’, which features Frank Ocean and Migos on guest vocals – and Calvin playing every part himself.

Here’s the original track on Spotify:

And here’s how it was done:

The clip has gone viral, as it shines a light on exactly how a song is made. What’s telling is how ‘simple’ and minimal the track is; there’s a relatively low number of parts but they all do a job, which is the key to clever production – listen to any Pharrell/Neptunes track, for example, and you’ll hear a similar method. Of course, writing, recording and selecting the right parts is the tricky bit, so it’s not quite as simple as it sounds.

Naturally, studio geeks also seized upon the revelation that Calvin’s still using Logic 9 and not the latest version (Logic X) but most of you couldn’t care less about that we’re guessing.

Keep ‘em coming in 2017 please Mr Harris.

[Image: Rex]