Background and career
Meghan Elizabeth Trainor (born December 22, 1993) is an American singer-songwriter and television personality. She rose to prominence after signing with Epic Records in 2014 and releasing her debut single "All About That Bass", which reached number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold 11 million copies worldwide. Trainor has released seven studio albums with the label and has received various accolades, including a Grammy Award, four ASCAP Pop Music Awards, and two Billboard Music Awards. Trainor became interested in music at a young age; she recorded three independently released acoustic albums and began writing and producing songs for other artists from 2013. Trainor made her major-label debut with the pop and blue-eyed soul record Title (2015), which debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 and spawned the top-10 singles "Lips Are Movin" and "Like I'm Gonna Lose You". Her dance-pop and R&B follow-up Thank You (2016) and its lead single "No" both reached number three on their respective charts. In 2020, Trainor ventured into funk on Treat Myself and holiday music on A Very Trainor Christmas. She followed these with the doo-wop and bubblegum pop albums Takin' It Back (2022) and Timeless (2024); the former produced the single "Made You Look", which reached the top five in several countries. Trainor's subsequent record, Toy with Me (2026), blends contemporary trends with retro influences. Trainor's lyrics frequently include themes of womanhood, body image, and personal empowerment; however, at times, they have been criticized for being anti-feminist. Her music is influenced by the popular music of the 1950s, and blends the genres pop, R&B, doo-wop, and blue-eyed soul. Outside of the music industry, Trainor has had voice roles in the animated films Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017) and Playmobil: The Movie (2019). She served as a judge on the television talent shows The Four: Battle for Stardom (2018), The Voice UK (2020), and Australian Idol (2023).
Meghan Elizabeth Trainor was born on December 22, 1993, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, to jewelers Kelli (née Jekanowski) and Gary Trainor. She has an older brother named Ryan and a younger brother named Justin. She began singing at age six, at a Methodist church with her father who was a music teacher and organist. Trainor's family encouraged her to pursue her musical interests and she had told her father she wanted to become a recording artist. She began writing songs and recording them using the digital audio workstation software GarageBand. Trainor started with her own arrangement of the song "Heart and Soul" (1938). According to her mother, Trainor "did a lot [of playing] by ear", and played music without formal training. Her father wanted her to explore every musical genre. At age 12, Trainor began performing as part of the cover band Island Fusion, which also included her aunt, younger brother, and father. They performed soca music as well as Trainor's own compositions. She was in the group for four years, singing and playing piano, guitar, and bongo drums. They would play Bob Marley covers in bars and even opened for the Jamaican singer Beenie Man. By age 13, Trainor had written her first original song, "Give Me a Chance". Trainor and her family left Nantucket when she was in the eighth grade, temporarily relocating to Orleans, Massachusetts, before moving to North Eastham. She attended Nauset Regional High School and studied guitar, played trumpet, and sang in a jazz band for three years, and was a substitute cheerleader. While she was a teenager, Trainor's parents nudged her to attend songwriting conventions and took her to venues at which production companies were searching for new artists and songwriters. At age 15, she took guitar lessons from former NRBQ member Johnny Spampinato. During this time, Trainor used Logic Studio to record and produce her compositions and later worked independently in a home studio built by her parents. She also attended summer music education programs in Boston at Berklee College of Music in 2009 and 2010 to further develop her music skills.
Between the ages of 15 and 17, Trainor independently released three albums of material she had written, recorded, performed, and produced. She enrolled in the Summer Performance Program at the Berklee College of Music during the mid-year months of 2009 and 2010. Her debut album, Meghan Trainor, was released on December 25, 2009. Trainor released the song "Take Care of Our Soldiers" on April 16, 2010. She donated all of the proceeds from the single to the United Service Organizations (USO) and Cape Cod Cares for Our Troops. The following year, Trainor released the acoustic albums I'll Sing with You and Only 17. At a music conference in Nashville, Trainor introduced herself to former NRBQ member Al Anderson. He was reportedly impressed by Trainor's songwriting and referred her to his publisher Carla Wallace of Nashville-based music publishing firm Big Yellow Dog Music. Though Trainor had been offered a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music, she pursued her songwriting career and signed with Big Yellow Dog Music in 2012. She began her career as a songwriter-for-hire for other artists. Her father said, "She thought she was one of the chubby girls who would never be an artist". Trainor graduated from Nauset Regional High School in 2012. She released her song "Who I Wanna Be" for digital download on April 24, 2012. Throughout 2013, Trainor traveled to Nashville, New York City and Los Angeles, where she wrote and helped produce country and pop songs. She sang lead and background vocals on demos for other artists and her vocals were occasionally used on the final recordings. Trainor co-wrote the song "In the Sun", which was released as a single by Danish artist Aya Katrine in May 2013. In June 2013, Trainor met producer Kevin Kadish in Nashville via Wallace and a mutual friend. Both Kadish and Trainor liked retro style music and began recording together that month. Trainor later became frustrated with commuting from Nantucket to Los Angeles for songwriting sessions. Her parents did not want her to relocate as it would be expensive so in November 2013, Trainor decided to relocate to Nashville instead. There she wrote songs for a number of acts including Hunter Hayes, Rascal Flatts, R5, and Sabrina Carpenter.
Kadish and Trainor co-wrote "All About That Bass" in November 2013. The song was inspired by Trainor's struggle to accept her appearance and her feelings of insecurity about looking at pictures of herself. The duo offered the song to several record labels, all of which rejected the doo-wop song because it was not "synth-y, pop-y" enough. Trainor later met Paul Pontius, the A&R agent for Epic Records, and performed "All About That Bass" for him. Pontius arranged a meeting with label chairman L.A. Reid, during which Trainor performed the song for Reid, who signed her 20 minutes later. Subsequently, Trainor hired Troy Carter as her manager and released "All About That Bass" on June 30, 2014. The song reached number one in 58 countries, its music video went viral, and it sold 11 million units worldwide. It spent eight consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Media outlets including Vice, The Fader and Complex accused Trainor of cultural appropriation in "All About That Bass", The Seattle Times' Paul de Barros commented that Trainor affects an accent akin to that of a "young, urban, African American woman" in the song, while its lyric "bringing booty back/Go ahead and tell them skinny bitches that" was criticized by Vox's Kelsey McKinney for dismissing people of smaller body types. Trainor justified her use of the lyric by stating "just kidding, I know even you think you are fat" right after it.
Trainor's debut extended play (EP), Title, was released on September 9, 2014. Trainor and Kadish composed its songs. The EP peaked at number 15 on the US Billboard 200 and at number 17 on the Canadian Albums Chart. Stereogum and Out noted the EP proved Trainor could outlast the success of her debut single. Music critics including McKinney and Slate's L.V. Anderson wrote that the EP's title track and "All About That Bass" are anti-feminist; Anderson stated that the songs send the message that "a woman's worth is defined by men" and set a negative example for Trainor's young female audience. Trainor responded to the anti-feminism claims by commenting, "I don't know, man! I just wrote a fun song about loving your booty and loving your body!" She released her second single "Lips Are Movin", a retro song in a similar vein to its predecessor, on October 21 that year. The song peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100, also reaching the top 10 in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Billboard ranked her as the fourth Top New Artist of the year placing her 12th on their annual list of the most powerful people in music under the age of 21. Trainor's three self-released albums were removed from sale in the build-up to the release of her major-label debut studio album Title, which replaced her EP of the same name on the iTunes Store, and was released on January 9, 2015. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, it received an average score of 59 based on 13 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, earning a triple platinum certification from the RIAA. It was the ninth best-selling album of 2015 worldwide, with 1.8 million copies sold according to IFPI. The album's later singles "Dear Future Husband" and "Like I'm Gonna Lose You" reached the Hot 100's top 20, and the latter reached number one on the Australian Singles Chart. The music video for "Dear Future Husband", which depicts Trainor scrubbing a kitchen floor, drew criticism and online critics labeled it as "sexist" and "anti-feminist" for its portrayal of traditional gender stereotypes. She responded to the criticism by saying; "but no, I don't believe I was [being sexist]. I think I was just writing my song to my future husband out there, wherever he is". Trainor performed a duet with Charlie Puth on his debut single "Marvin Gaye", which was released in February 2015. Trainor began her first headlining concert tour, That Bass Tour, on February 11, 2015, with Australian band Sheppard as the opening act. The album was also promoted through the "MTrain Tour", with Puth and Life of Dillon as opening acts. The tour was set to begin on July 3 but Trainor was diagnosed with a vocal cord hemorrhage that month and her medical team ordered her to undergo complete vocal rest, delaying the first two dates of the tour. In July, she announced that she was writing the song "Better When I'm Dancin'" for The Peanuts Movie soundtrack (2015). On August 11, 2015, Trainor announced the cancellation of the remainder of her North American tour and said she would undergo surgery "to finally fix this once and for all". On September 1, 2015, she confirmed that she had successfully gone through the surgery and would need a six-week recovery period before performing again. Trainor appeared as a musical guest on the third season of the American television sitcom Undateable. In late 2015, American singer Who Is Fancy released the single "Boys Like You", which features her and Ariana Grande. Trainor won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards.
Trainor told E! Online on January 7, 2016, she had almost finished working on her second major-label studio album Thank You. She told MTV News the album was influenced by the music of Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, and Bruno Mars, and includes a collaboration between her and R. City. The album's first single "No" was produced by Ricky Reed and was released on March 4, 2016. The R&B song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100. Shortly after the release of "No", Trainor released the promotional singles "Watch Me Do", "I Love Me", "Better" (featuring American rapper Yo Gotti), and "Mom", on which Trainor's mother appears. The second single from the album, "Me Too", was released on May 5; the accompanying video was released four days later but removed the same day because of unapproved digital manipulation of Trainor's body. An unedited version of the video was released the next day. The song peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. A performance of the song on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon drew attention when Trainor fell to the floor while trying to catch hold of a microphone stand. Thank You was released on May 6, 2016. The album received mixed reviews, resulting in a Metacritic score of 60 based on 10 of them, and debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200; it was certified platinum in the US for sales in excess of a million units. In July, Trainor embarked on The Untouchable Tour in support of it, with Hailee Steinfeld and Common Kings as opening acts. "Better" was released as the album's third single in August 2016, and received a music video that includes a cameo from Beau Bridges. Trainor appeared on three other artists' songs in 2016, "Forgive Me Father" from DJ Khaled's album Major Key, "Someday" from Michael Bublé's album Nobody but Me, and "Baby, It's Cold Outside" from Brett Eldredge's album Glow. She co-wrote multiple songs that year, including Jennifer Lopez's "Ain't Your Mama" and "You Gotta Not" from Little Mix's album Glory Days. On February 24, 2017, Trainor released the single "I'm a Lady", which she recorded for the film Smurfs: The Lost Village, in which she also voiced a character called Smurfmelody.
