Calvin Harris Rushes to Taylor Swift’s Defense in War of Words with Zayn Malik, Everybody Loses
Zayn Malik slammed Swift over her anti-Spotify stance, so beau Calvin Harris rushed to her defense. Then things got even more childish and nasty. These people have too much money.
Taylor tangled with Nicki. Iggy battled with Britney. Meek Mill declared war with Drake only to find himself slain in battle, many times over, as the Summer Of Celebrity Beef marched on.
Now Zayn and Calvin have problems, and I don’t think they can solve them.
Former One Directioner Zayn Malik and celebrity DJ/producer Calvin Harris exchanged some harsh words Monday on Twitter, the battlefield du jour of any social media-savvy fame monster.
Harris is of course dating pop empress Taylor Swift, whose honor he stepped in to defend Monday when passions flared… over artistic integrity and streaming royalty payouts.
It began when his Brit countryman Zayn shaded Taylor with a passive-aggressive retweet from Twitter user @FemaleTexts comparing Swift’s high-profile decision to take her music off of Spotify, where artists earn a fraction of one penny per song play, to Miley Cyrus’s pop-zen comments about how she already has so much cash she doesn’t care about album sales.
That RT didn’t sit well with Harris when it popped up in his feed. He lashed out on Taylor’s behalf, TAGGING ZAYN DIRECTLY while praising Swift for standing up for the little guys: “You’ve made your money? Cool...fuck the 99% of musicians who depend on these services to survive right? Yeah fuck em.”
“If u don’t get what it means when a successful artist uses their celebrity to benefit every other musician and songwriter in the industry ...stay out my fuckin mentions pls,” he continued sans tags, sending his message far and wide to the youth of the land.
“While u kids are refresh voting teen choice awards there’s some poor fucker in a basement making your new favorite record trying to survive,” Harris preached on. “Meaning...stay out of things you don’t understand.”
That didn’t sit well with Malik, who quit boy band 1D in March and signed as a solo artist with RCA last month.
“ha you just made an absolute fool of yourself mate… you clearly didn’t understand what I just said either,” Malik retort-Tweeted to Harris, despite the fact that a RT is not technically saying something, but whatevs.
Those watching the conflict closely in real time will have noticed that at precisely 12:36 PM PT, Harris made a good-faith attempt to quash the feud. “all good,” he wrote. “it was the quote not you personally mate.”
That didn’t matter—because at the very same moment, the 22-year-old dropped the sickest burn on the 31-year-old DJ to win the beef once and for all.
… so i suggest you calm your knickers before them dentures fall out.”
Harris responded with an appropriate “lol.” Zayn struck back with a non sequitur calling Harris a “dickhead” and, some pop culture scholars might argue, a callback to the Meek Mill-Drake beef that’s earned over 100K retweets and counting: “Oh and I write my own shit too dickhead.”
Harris stepped away from the skirmish, ever the gentleman combatant. “best of luck, genuinely. You’ve got a great voice.”
Within hours of throwing the Zayn and Harris/Swift fandoms into chaos, Monday’s most volatile celebri-feud was solved in one merciful blow by a neutral third party when, after being inundated by residual shade from both sides, @FemaleTexts simply deleted the original anti-Taylor Tweet—a first step toward healing.