An In-Depth Analysis of the Photo That Captured the First Time Calvin Harris Met Taylor Swift

Nowadays going to pubs or museums or shops or parks or benches or aquariums or zoos or salmon farms or National Trust properties or job centres or saunas or Celia Hammond animal sanctuaries or post office sorting offices means being sat next to a quiet couple on a Tinder date. Isn't it all modern and awkward and worthy of tweets and status updates which say, "Strange, isn't it, that two strangers brought together via an app which literally asks you to pick a potential mate by swiping a finger right or left on a clammy screen might find their first meeting a bit uncomfortable, and I am going to sneer at that because I am above such things and I find my partners by doing Old Fashioned Romantic Things like DMing them." What it means, in essence, is that we're more likely to witness the start of a relationship than we ever have been in the history of relationships. Probably. Maybe the Greeks just went all out and shagged on tiles in town squares. Who knows.

Thanks to Instagram user Max.Will.Makes.Music, we recently got to witness the birth of another relationship. In a photo taken at the Elle Awards last year, Max has captured the moment when Calvin Harris and Taylor Swift met for the first time. And what a moment it was.

We've decided to really engage with the photo and work exactly what it all means. Follow us on a journey into the still-beating heart of a romance which defined a generation.

If we're being totally honest here, this is a terrible, terrible photograph. It's blurry, the composition's all wrong, and the lighting is unflattering the point where everyone in the frame just looks like on amorphous blob of underdone, wet, slimy gammon. If a mate of yours had posted this photo on their Instagram they'd have been laughed off the timeline, or at least been massively, massively bullied by the negroni it sits below and the pair of soiled knickers on a European street corner above. "Was this taken on a potato mate" you would have commented, before adding a line of cry-laugh emojis. Your mate would have given it an hour and then deleted it, and then gone and sat outside and felt a deep sense of shame burning through every fibre of his being. "What have I become," he says, sobbing, "why did I ever think that posting a blurry photo like that was ever a good idea? Why?" The world offers him no answers. He spends the rest of the day manically trying to find something 'Gram worthy. He stumbles across an old Fanta can from the 90s nestled in a bush. He weeps tears of joy. He takes a photo. He posts the photo. The photo gets two likes.

Now, I could have a pop at Max Will here for his terrible photography skills but I'm better than that, so I won't say anything like, "Christ, I know you had to fire off a few shots really, really quickly because you were on the red carpet at the Elle Style Awards and you'd found yourself really, really close to some of the biggest pop stars on planet pop, but Max, mate, you've made everyone involved look like corrugated cardboard doused in Dior," or, "Nice photo…not!" I won't do that because I am a bigger and better man than that and I know that sometimes our cameras let us down. I do have a few questions about Max though, and these are those questions:

1) Max, is your name a humorous reference to hip hop mega-producer Mike Will Made It? If you remember, a few years back now Mike Will Made It was a big deal and all the songs that Mike Will Made It produced interpolated a sample of a lady saying "Mike Will made it" just so you didn't forget that Mike Will Made It made it. When a Max Will song comes on do you say "Max Will makes music" like the Mike Will Made It lady says "Mike Will made it"?

2) When you first spotted Sam Smith, Ellie Goulding, Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris standing together at the Elle Style Awards, how did you feel? Deep inside how did the scene make you feel? Did you know you were witnessing the start of a relationship? Did you want to reach out and offer them any advice? What were they talking about? What was the vibe?

3) Did Ellie Goulding shout at you? It looks like she is about to shout at you as you're taking the photo. Did you get told off by Eillie Goulding for taking a photo of her at the Elle Style Awards?

Max Will says that this is Calvin Harris but can we actually be sure? I mean, if I did a modicum of research I could probably absolutely definitely confirm that Calvin Harris did attend this award show. I've only got this photo to go on though and the man in this photo who is meant to be Calvin Harris, and probably is Calvin Harris, looks more like a lower league goalkeeper with a promising career ahead of him who suffers an unfortunate injury in a pre-season friendly and has to retire at 24 and becomes an incredibly bitter man who works part-time in a garage fitting tyres. He never watches football again. He now hates football. He absolutely fucking hates football. Here he is, just before the leg-break, just before it all went wrong, on a night out with a new teammate. "Ah mate," Calvin says to the slightly out of sorts striker, "bagsy me the one in green, aye?" The night doesn't pan out as planned. Calvin and Sam are spurned by some better looking lads with nice big watches, so they end up drinking shot after shot, chuffing fag after fag. A journalist for the local paper catches them mid-smoke. They are disgraced.

My word, doesn't she look bored? Like utterly, ruiningly bored. The kind of bored you only ever really experienced during that eternal summer between GCSEs and sixth-form. The kind of bored that traps you into thinking that life is always this disgustingly dull. The kind of bored that leads to you smash out six wanks in two hours for want of something to do. Come on Taylor, this is the Elle Style Awards! Have a laugh! You're with Sam Smith! And Calvin Harris! And Max Will! Bet there's a good goody bag waiting for you guys inside!

There's no point beating around the bush: the diminutive Welsh vocalist looks furious here. She looks ready to fight. She looks ready to grab your iPhone 4C and stamp on it in front of you. She looks furious enough to do that and then ring up your phone network and tell them that your phone didn't break as the result of an accident, and you'll stand there and accept the fact that you're going to have to buy a whole new handset and you remember that you're late on your gas payment and it is mother's day this weekend and Ellie Goulding is still holding a fist up at you so you try and stay calm and collected because you have a very genuine fear that the slightest false move is going to result in a smack round the face and you're at the Elle Style Awards and blood on the red carpet would be a terrible look.

He looks humiliated. Sam Smith looks like someone just pulled his trousers down and he'd forgotten that it was the Elle Style Awards tonight so he's just got on some old comfortable boxers on but they are Looney Tunes ones that say "THAT'S ALL FOLKS" and point at his dick and now he's really embarrassed because everyone must think he has a small dick. This isn't the night he wanted. This really isn't the night he wanted.

Calvin: I don't want to be here.

Ellie: I don't want to be here.

Taylor: I don't want to be here.

Sam: Did everyone see my dick just then?

A terrible photo in many respects, but as a piece of history we will always treasure this blurry photo of Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris at the Elle Style Awards taken by Max Will Makes Music. Imagine, if you will, the joy our ancestors would have felt should they have been able to gaze at the moment Romeo and Juliet's eyes met for the first time across a square in Verona, or there being proof of Anthony and Cleopatra's falling in love, or an etching of the moment when Debbie McGee met Paul Daniels. We are lucky to have such a document in our lives. Let us treasure it. Thank you, Max Will Makes Music, for you have given us the greatest gift of all: life.

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