Calvin Harris: Lemar Is Copying Taio Cruz, Who Is Copying Ne-Yo

Calvin Harris checked in with fans on his blog at MySpace (@calvinharris) on Sunday (November 9), taking a shot at Lemar’s new single ‘If She Knew’ sounding like Ne-Yo, though perhaps to make a point after explaining how he was slated for similar reasons by musical peers. The British singer, songwriter and producer tells readers:

Never thought I’d see Lemar copying Taio Cruz, who himself is copying Ne-Yo. What a situation. I can understand why, when us Brits want to do ‘r&b’ or ‘urban’ or whatever you want to call it, we look to America for inspiration, but I’m left wondering what these songs are actually for?
You can’t dance to it, it’s a sh** song, boring production, what else is there?

I like good songs you can’t dance to.
I like sh** songs you can dance to.
I like sh** songs you can’t dance to but sound amazing.
Obviously the aim is to tick all the boxes but sometimes it doesn’t really matter.

I remember I was in Berlin last year waiting for soundcheck so to pass the time I picked up a German music magazine to see what the chat was. It had all these music artists reviewing albums that were coming out that week, and my album got slated by Justice AND Goldfrapp, two acts whose production I quite enjoy. I can’t remember what Goldfrapp said, I imagine it was something about the quality of the songs, but Justice said I was sh** because I sounded like ‘everybody else’, which really wounded me, because the reason I enjoy making music is to create songs that sound different to everything else.

I then tried to think of songs that sound like ‘Acceptable in the 80s’ or ‘The Girls’ - I couldn’t, and that’s when I realized that both Justice and Goldfrapp can fu** right off. Which is hopefully what Lemar would say if he read this…

So all that was a bit of a waste of time really eh?