Calvin Harris Teases Never Before Heard Snippets From His New Album
After it was announced that Calvin Harris would be featured on DJ Khaled’s new album Grateful, Calvin Harris has uploaded a new video teasing never before heard snippets from his new album Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1.
Even though Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 is slated for a release date on June 30th, Calvin Harris uploaded a video teasing snippets from his new album today (June 12th). During the 2 minute clip, Calvin Harris teased his new collaborations featuring artists such as Snoop Dogg, D.R.A.M., Frank Ocean, Pharrell Williams, Travis Scott, Kehlani, Big Sean, Khalid, Jessie Reyez and Nicki Minaj.
This is Calvin Harris in full reinvention mode. After spending years as the guy behind arena-sized EDM anthems, Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 is him swinging hard toward disco, funk, and R&B influenced production — think warm basslines and live-sounding instrumentation instead of festival-ready drops. The teaser clip alone reads like a who’s who of pop, hip-hop, and R&B, and it’s only a fraction of who’s actually on the record. Once the full tracklist rolled out, it also included Migos, Ariana Grande, Future, John Legend, Katy Perry, Lil Yachty, PartyNextDoor, Young Thug and ScHoolboy Q, making the final album one of the most feature-stacked projects of the summer.
It’s worth remembering how different this era was for Calvin Harris. This is the guy who wrote and produced “We Found Love,” “Summer,” and a stack of chart-topping EDM-pop crossovers, suddenly stepping back to let his collaborators’ personalities and vocals carry entire records over loose, groove-driven production. It’s a genuinely bold pivot for someone at his level of fame, the kind of move that could’ve easily flopped if the songs weren’t strong enough — which is exactly why fans were dissecting every second of this teaser clip the moment it dropped.
Harris didn’t stop at a single teaser video either — a few weeks earlier, on May 9th, he’d already put up billboards in cities like London and New York’s Times Square featuring the names of the album’s collaborators, slowly building the hype without giving fans an actual listen. Rolling out the June 12th snippet video was the next step in that drawn-out reveal, giving longtime fans just enough of a taste to make the wait for June 30th feel unbearable.
Watch the unreleased collaborations from Calvin Harris below.
https://www.facebook.com/calvinharris/videos/10154717086126169/
