She’s about a lot more than ‘That Bass’
With the strength of hit song, Meghan Trainor poised to release major-label debut
NEW YORK— Meghan Trainor doesn’t really dance.
Onstage at Madison Square Garden for her allotted four minutes at the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball in mid-December, she fluttered her jazz hands and feinted at some hip swings, but a quartet of backup dancers in leather miniskirts did most of the moving. Trainor, in standout sequins, relied instead on her widening theatre-kid eyes and high notes, keeping up with her steps deliberately, if not smoothly. She’s still new at this.
“You ready for the bass?” she soon asked the crowd, transitioning into her big hit to cheers of recognition.
Trainor started the year as a behind-the-scenes songwriter but ended it as something of an accidental sensation thanks to “All About That Bass,” a song originally recorded on a whim for someone else — Beyoncé, maybe? — to perform. When labels balked at the demo, telling her they did not have the right delivery vehicle for the song’s mix of ’50s-inspired novelty doo-wop and bubble-gum hip hop — “Yeah it’s pretty clear, I ain’t no size 2,” she half-raps, “but I can shake it, shake it like I’m supposed to do” — Trainor herself turned it into a body-positivity smash. (“That bass” refers to her lower end.)
The song quickly became a cultural phenomenon, the kind of catchy tune parents and children alike mouthed the words to, while critics considered the complications of its body politics.
At the Jingle Ball, the Super Bowl of Top 40 radio, her newness was apparent next to performances by 2014’s other pop titans, like the selfassured Ariana Grande, the unsinkable Iggy Azalea and, of course, Taylor Swift, the reigning queen of them all. But Trainor was formidable company on paper, with “All About That Bass” having spent eight weeks atop the Billboard Hot100 chart and earning a Grammy nomination for record of the year and song of the year. “Lips Are Movin’,” a followup with a simi- larly playful sound, reached No. 4 on the charts before the release of her major-label debut, Title, out Tuesday from Epic.
Now comes the really hard part, as Trainor attempts to transform one megahit into a performing career. Combining the retro sound and technical proficiency of Adele and Amy Winehouse (if they wore more pastels), with the relatively safe, singsong rhymes of Azalea, Trainor is a musical chameleon, fluent in many styles from her time as a hired gun writing for other artists.
She also recently turned 21 and won’t pretend otherwise. “I didn’t want to be a Disney girl or put in that category,” Trainor said over sushi at her downtown hotel the day before her brief arena showcase. “We didn’t know little girls would gravitate so much to ‘That Bass.’ ” Beyoncé re- cently told the singer that Blue Ivy, her 3-year-old daughter, is a big fan.
Title has the same innocent sound — rich throwback harmonies and hand claps, ukulele and rollicking acoustic bass — but also dips further into more ribald themes on songs like “Bang Dem Sticks.”
In addition to spicing up the subject matter to better reflect her reality, Trainor was also wary of resting too comfortably on the sweet sounds of doo-wop. “I do reggae and I rap,” she said, adding that her uncle is a Trinidadian soca musician.
When the label asked for a cleaner version of “All About That Bass” to play on Radio Disney, Trainor and Kevin Kadish, who collaborated with her on that song and six others on Title, agreed but only on the condition that it be relegated to the kid station and never put up for sale.
“She’s got a lot of responsibility right now,” he added. Thanks to the love-yourself-as-you-are message of her hit, “she’s a role model,” he said.
Still, even “All About That Bass” came with some controversy for its politics, which some took to be as retro as the sound — it is still, ultimately, about appealing to men and jokingly disses “skinny bitches” — and its racial appropriation.
“I want to warn you that the entire song is sung by a white girl using a faux African-American vernacular accent,” author Jenny Trout wrote on her blog. “As a feminist, I’m no longer content to watch women of colour treated as props to further an appropriation of beauty standards that white women boast about and black women are oppressed by.”
As for the assertion that she’s “bringing booty back,” Trainor said, “I didn’t know it was a racial thing.”
The idea was never to make a political statement. “It was just a threeminute song, and the goal was to help me get more confident with my body,” she said.
Trainor was raised on the small Massachusetts island of Nantucket, where her parents own a jewelry store. The middle child between two brothers, she was writing songs by the age of 11, and before the end of high school she had signed a publishing deal as a songwriter.
Instead of attending the Berklee College of Music, where she’d been accepted, Trainor moved by herself to Nashville, Tenn., and found some success penning tunes for others. “There’s nothing country about her,” said Carla Wallace, who discovered Trainor as a teenager and signed her to Big Yellow Dog Music.
But despite placing two songs with Rascal Flatts, the popular country group, Trainor was left frustrated. “I loved it, but it was country,” she said. “I always thought, ‘This can’t be it — there’s got to be more.’ ”
She found it with Kadish. In their first session together, they wrote “All About That Bass,” based on a song title (“All Bass No Treble”) Kadish had been saving. “It was like a blind date,” he said. “Our writing chemistry turned out to be really strong.”
Selling the demo, however, was tougher than making it.
Eventually, after hearing the track in the office of Epic Records, L.A. Reid, the label’s chairman and chief executive, requested Trainor come audition herself.
Within days, Epic offered her a recording contract on the strength of “All About That Bass” alone. “Trainor, who has the easy charm of someone popular across social strata, had already self-released two solo albums. “I always was an artist in my head,” she said. “It was always the dream, and you could hear it in my music — girl just wants to be a pop star,” she said. “But my insecurities — I didn’t think I could sing and dance and play the part.”
Those fears disappeared when “All About That Bass” hit No. 1, and they haven’t returned, Trainor insisted. “Everyone asks me, ‘Are you scared to be a one-hit wonder?’ ” she said. “No, I’m a songwriter. That’s not even my best one.”