Sapperedosio, How Calvin Harris opened his Saturday headlining show at Pinkpop with a trio of hits. It cruises through “This Is What You Came For,” “One Kiss,” and “I Need Your Love” in the first ten minutes. It’s quite a powerful movement, but you know it has a whole bunch of jingles that even the most ignorant Pinkpop visitor could accidentally hum. And then, in the middle, he also performs several hit songs by others: “Satisfaction”, “(It Goes Like) Nanana”, “Fist Wave”Be the first‘,silly’Calabria’90s hit “I’ve Got Love”.

Of course, he doesn’t need to, because the forty-year-old Scot is currently the 17th most streamed artist in the world – two places above Ed Sheeran! -, but at the same time also the artist with the most streams and the least number of real fans. This is also evident from today’s disappointing ticket sales and from interviews conducted previously by the Pinkpop team. Calvin wasn’t a dream title, it was a Plan B or C (or even D).

After the great performances of Martin Garrix and Armin van Buuren the last few years, it wasn’t necessarily a crazy idea to put Calvin Harris here. However, while giving the Dutch people the feeling that they came here to do something special, Harris doesn’t seem to approach Pinkpop any differently from the world he usually walks in: the world of Ibiza clubs with VIP tables and electronic dance music festivals.

Maybe we also put DJ Spotify here? No, not that either. Each hit song has been given a new edit and quirky intros and outros with so much muscle room you can dance to it for a while before another chorus comes along.

But Harris doesn’t appear to have brought a single truck from in-house production. Nothing, nada, noobs. We see a huge LED wall in front of the DJ booth, his head barely sticking out of it, and we see some fireworks, streamers, and lasers, but nothing that seems specifically designed for those massive jingles on his USB stick. Even the visuals are so interchangeable that you can’t imagine this was made specifically for it: neon jellyfish fluttering in the vast void, hands floating around a ball during the song “How Deep Is Your Love,” and some faded lines. Even his face is only seen a few times over the course of an hour and a half, and more than “Pinkpop can I see your hands?” He wouldn’t get it in an hour and a half either. what’s left? An unidentified extra crushes Landgraaf with a loveless display. Most people who watched him for 90 minutes probably wouldn’t even recognize him if he waved goodbye to everyone on the way out.