Title

Though it feels like she made her grand entrance into the mainstream music space nearly a decade ago, Meghan Trainor first graced – or cursed, depending on your stance – us with her presence a mere five years ago with the original EP version of her breakout record Title, charging into the mainstream consciousness with an unrelenting charm that hit all the right spots as far as listeners were concerned – As if part of some super-secret underground marketing campaign that’d be planned for months, she seemingly gained her overwhelming notoriety in a matter of days upon the record’s release, playing on a loop alongside Sia’s fantastic “Chandelier” & Nicki Minaj’s bombastic “Bang Bang” as if she were the second coming of Christ, giving her one of the most outstanding freshman entries anyone had seen in years from a relative newcomer to the scene; Of course, this ultra-refined persona would soon be outed as a studio-exec’s pet project designed specifically to appeal to the masses, seeing as she literally deleted her entire library of previous albums from music distributors like iTunes & Spotify to give her new image an air of authority by distancing herself from the happy-go-lucky ukulele teen she was before, selling out to the nth degree & removing any sense of artistic integrity whatsoever – It goes without saying that this marketing treachery should’ve warned us from the get-go how problematic the young artist would become in the subsequent years, but the wool had already been pulled over our eyes, convincing everyone – even a typically-judgmental prick like myself – that Title was the bee’s knees, an album worth blasting when you wanted a moment of levity in a music industry besieged by an endless assault of Reggae Fusion vibes. Oh, how wrong we were…

The Hook Heard ‘Round The World

All About That Bass

Meghan Trainor

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One of the most defining factors of the last decade has been the presence of social media in our everyday lives, sites like the now-defunct Myspace, Tumblr & Facebook shaping how our society has grown in the years since their inception, becoming essential tools in how we communicate with one-another & express who we are, whether politically, emotionally or just creatively; Furthermore, this wave of electronic integration has given a voice to the voiceless, inspiring revolution in war-torn countries & allowing younger individuals to incite change through social activism, tackling topics such as age discrimination, sexual fluidity, religious freedom, gender inequality & so many more powerful causes – Born of this generation, Meghan Trainor decided to champion fat-shaming in her ‘introductory’ song “All About That Bass,” giving audiences a truly groovy sixties-era Bubblegum Pop tune all about appreciating your big-girl status & owning those luscious curves, serving as one of the only Caucasian artists who even bothered to address the thickness in her music after years & years of popular musicians pushing waifish, anorexic ideals & laughably-gigantic fake tits left over from the eighties Hair Metal scene; Finally, there was a radio-friendly representative for overweight individuals whose music made you proud of your size, taking a step forward in the fight against weight-discrimination & doing it with style, but – unfortunately – she ended up digging a dark hole for herself instead, using this very platform of hope & acceptance to flip the script on her rivaling body-types, going out of her way to bully skinny women with countless jokes about their insecurities & culturally-defined obsession with photoshopped beauty with lines like ‘go ahead and tell them skinny bitches that, no, I’m just playing I know you think you’re fat.” This quickly escalated into controversy from the second today’s sleuthing social media wizzes caught wind of the lyrics, damaging Trainor’s image irrevocably, but sadly not soon enough as she’d already won the mainstream fame the record was designed to achieve.

Disney Charm With A Bad-Girl Attitude

Controversies aside, the real reason Meghan Trainor caught everyone’s attention at the time was her ability to blend anachronistic musical styles like the innocent Diner Pop you’d find in the first Back To The Future movie with a rather spunky modern attitude, pushing side the coy, reserved expectations of femininity in favour of a more brash personality that demanded recognition, satisfying the anti-establishment desires of mainstream audiences who’d only just started acknowledging feminism as something we all should be practicing for the betterment of humanity. Songs like “Dear Future Husband” took a comedic approach to the whole trophy-wife archetype, with Trainor explaining to her imaginary suitor – who himself is a bit of a stretch in terms of realism – that she’s not the type of girly-girl who’ll be at home cooking him apple pies & tending to the children, demanding he learn to satisfy her needs with unwavering adoration lest he be left in the dust by her overwhelmingly blunt characteristics – Though certainly cheeky & fun to listen to, this song & others like “Bang Dem Sticks” or the misleadingly-titled “Walkashame” present more problems than they do solutions for today’s imbalanced gender politics, creating a wave of misguided, self-absorbed terrors in Trainor’s younger listeners who’ve been conditioned to get their way by any means necessary rather than working with their partners to enrich the world with more-caring individuals, stacking the deck with the female-equivalent of toxic masculinity as if that’s a viable solution for the issues facing our society today; Sure, it lures you in with bubbly beats & soothing Pop vocals at first, but even the slightest bit of narrative analysis reveals nothing but vitriol hiding in the margins of every single track on Title, making it one of the most dangerous sleeper-agents in the music industry.

A Tyrant In A Candy Store With Unfettered Control

Like I'm Gonna Lose You (feat. John Legend)

Meghan Trainor

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I don’t mean to sound overly-critical about Title, as there’re a handful of admittedly solid compositions hiding within its runtime; Somber tunes like the John Legend collaboration “Like I’m Gonna Lose You” are much-deserved revivals of the classic Pop sounds of yesteryear, while others like the delicate “03:00:00 AM” evoke the innocent soundscapes of the UK Pop aesthetic that often accompanies the first few years of a Britain’s Got Talent star once they hit the big-times, but these rare selections only serve to make the rest of the record so much more damning in what they mean for the future of Meghan Trainor’s career, their radiant hopefulness giving audiences a false sense of security that the next collection of songs is going to be more mature, breaking the mainstream trend of Reggae Fusion & Tropical Pop sensibilities up enough to provide even the slightest bit of variety on the radio which Trainor herself would become a champion of in the years to come. Alas, when her label saw just how profitable Title had become in such a short time, the ink was already dry on the travesty we’d experience in just a couple years’ time, sealing our fate & ensuring Trainor would grow mad with power as her celebrity continued to grow, resulting in arguably one of the worst Pop records of the modern era in her follow-up production Thank You, of which I have the honour – or maybe regret – of tackling next – I don’t blame you if you’re still a fan of Trainor’s earlier music after all this time, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to defend the beast she’s become today & as such you might want to consider if you’re part of the problem yourself.