“It gets a little bit suspect”: Calvin Harris explains why he plans to stop DJing when he hits 50 and retire to the studio to make “other people’s records sound good”

Aged 40, Calvin Harris is at the top of his game, but the musician and producer has revealed that he has no plans to carry on DJing once he hits his next decade milestone.

“I always said that, once I get past 50, I can’t see me DJing, man,” he told MistaJam on Capital Dance. When it was put to him when other people have stayed in the booth long past that age - Carl Cox, for example - Harris explained that he’s not quite in the same mold.

“It’s a certain type of DJing, though, isn’t it?,” he says of Cox’s style. “The more commercial end it’s a wee bit… a little bit suspect. I think I’d prefer to be, like, in the studio making tunes.”

Whether this would be under his own name or another isn’t clear - Harris brings up the subject of ghost production at one point - but he does believe that, on the whole, he’s better suited to being in the studio than on stage.

“I think that’s where the majority of my talent lies - making something sound good,” he says. “So I would like to make other people’s records sound good.”

Just as there have never been any ‘rules’ on when you should retire as a rock band, there are plenty of more ‘senior’ DJs out there who continue to play. At 56, David Guetta shows no sign of slowing down, and Fatboy Slim, who turned 60 last year, seems to have as many gigs lined up as ever.

Whether Harris ends up changing his tune (and continuing to spin them) remains to be seen, but one show he’ll definitely be playing is this weekend’s Brit Awards ceremony, at which he’ll be taking to the stage with Ellie Goulding, presumably to perform their song Miracle, which is nominated for Song of the Year.