The pop music industry is tough to crack into — requiring the right timing, the right voice and the right song. Breaking into the business, Meghan Trainor saw success in 2014 with her number one single “All About That Bass.” Sadly, Trainor’s debut studio album, “Title,” is both lackluster and dull, with tracks that never quite coalesce and sound rather formulaic.
The album opener, “The Best Part (Interlude),” is cheeky but fake. Trainor seems under the impression that she has millions of die-hard fans who cannot wait for her to sing about her innermost thoughts. This is false. At present, the pop starling does not inspire huge amounts of curiosity — and this is OK. Trainor has been on the scene for far too short a time for listeners to feel deeply invested in her every emotion.
As she continues to figure out her sound and vocal style, Trainor clearly has some significant work to do. The entire album seems as though her record label forced her to record 15 songs while she was still coasting on the success of “All About That Bass” and “Lips Are Movin.”
Upon listening to the album, “fans” will likely ask themselves, “Who is Meghan Trainor?” The girl who sings about positive body image at the beginning of the album switches halfway through to sing and rap “Bang Dem Sticks” — a strange, awkward song that sounds like the musical lovechild of Fergie’s “London Bridge” by Fergie and Jason DeRulo’s “Talk Dirty.” At one point she even states, “I ain’t talkin’ dirty…” It is the kind of musical garbage that will make many question Trainor’s worth as an artist.
It’s hard to be taken seriously as an artist when you begin your career by building your image around meaningful, impactful songs with alleged morals. Trainor’s problem is that everyone will expect for her album to mean something. Instead, she essentially sings the same track in the same key, 11 times. The title track (“Title”) sounds exactly like “Lips are Movin” — which sounds remarkably similar to “All About That Bass,” which is also the twin of “Dear Future Husband.”
Her doo-wop feel has significant potential — and yet, it is a little insulting that Trainor (or her record label) thought audiences would not notice that Trainor is singing the same song over and over again on her album. We noticed, Epic Records.
Even the addition of a ballad — “Like I’m Gonna Lose You” which features a subdued John Legend — disappoints. It is a surprise Trainor could afford to pay for Legend’s feature...and even more surprising that Legend would demean himself in this way to sell a few more singles.
Sometimes Trainor sounds like Cher Lloyd (“Mr. Almost”), and then Bridgit Mendler (“Walkashame”) and sometimes Rihanna (“No Good For You”), but she never really sounds like herself. She has so much talent and so much promise, but tragically squanders it by the terrible songs that comprise her debut album. Hopefully Trainor will stay in the game for a little while longer and give her listeners what they want.
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