Calvin Harris Just Wanted To 'Go For It' With Star-Studded 18 Months

Some artists come up with hard-to-decipher names for their albums based cryptic in-jokes that only they understand and appreciate. Then there's VMA winner
 Calvin Harris. The Scottish-born DJ/producer could have gone any direction with the name of his upcoming star-studded album, but instead he chose 18 Months as the title of the disc featuring songs with Rihanna, Ne-Yo, Kelis, Florence Welch, Ellie Goulding and Tinie Tempah.

"It was a mixture between 18 months studio time and gigs and also it was kind of a point when I stopped performing in a certain way with a band and singing all the time and ... just focused on production and DJing," he said by way of explaining the title. "So it made sense to draw that line there and it just happened to be 18 months before I finished the album."

Due out on October 30, the 15-track album is the follow up to 2009's #1 disc Ready For the Weekend and it will include his smash hit with Rihanna, "We Found Love," as well as "Bounce" (Kelis), "I Need Your Love" (Ellie Goulding), "Drinking From the Bottle (Tinie Tempah), "Sweet Nothing" (Florence Welch), "Here 2 China" (Dillon Francis and Dizzee Rascal), "Let's Go" (Ne-Yo), "Thinking About You" (Ayah), "We'll Be Coming Back" (Example) and "Iron" (Nicky Romero).

Among the other tracks are "Green Valley," "Feel So Close," "Mansion," "School" and "Awooga."

The collaboration with Welch is the current single from the disc and Harris said that, like the other guests, he's counting on her to help him sell the record. Of course, it was fun to work with a bunch of acts he'd always wanted to be in the studio with, but Harris had other reasons to pack the track list with so many bold-faced names.

"I've never done that before, although I did production ... the odd track for someone ... for my own albums I'd never really reached out to anyone else," he said. "So I just wanted to go for it and see how many people I could get on one record."

When the "Sweet Nothing" single hits the radio it will be accompanied by remixes by Tiesto, Dirtyloud and Qulinez.

Harris said there were, of course, people who turned him down initially. But once they saw the global success of "We Found Love" some of them, well, had a change of heart. "There were people at the start of the record when I was trying to gather some people ... 18 months ago that said no," he said. "And then came back, after, maybe, 16 months, maybe after 'We Found Love.' They were interested now, you know, they'd obviously freed up some time and could do it then."