This Signature Ballad By You Me At Six Nearly Became A Calvin Harris EDM Banger

One of the most beloved ballads You Me At Six ever released, Take On The World, nearly went to Calvin Harris.

You Me At Six frontman Josh Franceschi unearthed the scoop for the first time in a new interview with The Music.

Mentioning the “many things” that have happened throughout the English rock band’s career, one of the wildest “twists and turns” is that the singer of the Calvin Harris song How Deep Is Your Love?, Ina Wroldsen, nearly sang the You Me At Six song.

“It's become this love song for people,” Franceschi said of Take On The World. He explained, “I wrote that song with a guy called Iain Archer in a loft of a church in North London. I sang what I was thinking, and he'd write it down. And then he said, ‘What about you say that instead, here and there.’

“I've never told anybody this story, but at the time, we're at Three Six Zero Management with loads of random people, a big manager company,” Franceschi said. “At the time, I'd gone to write a song with this guy trying to sell it to Calvin Harris. Take On The World was originally going to be a Calvin Harris song, and it got very close.

“In the final moments of that whole thing happening, I worked with a woman named Ina Wroldsen who sang on How Deep Is Your Love?” Franceschi said. “She was going to sing the words to Take On The World. It was all coming together, and then it didn't. It's always coming together until it doesn't [laughs].”

After the collaboration with Harris and Wroldsen didn’t turn out, Franceschi took the song to his bandmates. “I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I should show the lads this song I wrote as a dance song, maybe they'll like it,’” he said.

Then, Franceschi and his bandmates made Take On The World, the ballad we know. Expecting the song to become another Crash—an album cut only devoted fans care about—Take On The World took on a life of its own, playing in season eight episode 16 of The Vampire Diaries and is officially the “big” ballad moment at You Me At Six shows.

You can read the remainder of Franceschi’s interview with The Music here.

The interview follows the announcement of You Me At Six’s final Australian tour scheduled for January 2025.

The band plans to make the final Australian tour a “victory lap,” with setlists featuring songs from all eight albums.

“We’ve got a plan to play songs from every single album and make it a real victory lap, and everyone feels like that,” Franceschi said in a press release. “We’ve looked at the setlists and gone, ‘Cool – those five can stay; the rest is going to be stuff we haven’t done for years. We want to have 50 songs ready to go so that each night, we can constantly mix it up and make it special.”