The new song you can't escape is called "All About That Bass," and sounds nothing like its title. You won't be hearing it in the DJ's club mix or slow, loud and banging in the streets. But you might hear it if Taylor Swift and Adele ever square off in a celebrity death match.
The song is a lot of things, but the one that truly matters is it's a megahit for newcomer Meghan Trainor. Saying it's catchy is like saying the ebola virus is deadly. Sure, one or two people may be able to stop humming it after a listen, but they'll need intensive treatment in an American hospital overseen by the CDC to do it.
Trainor's voice has a sweet country twang, which belies the fact that she grew up in Massachusetts. Girl's got some blue-eyed soul, too. It might be the whole "Bass" and "Super Bass" connection, but does she sound a little like Nicki Minaj at times?
From the "All About That Bass" videoAs her way-fashionable attire in the "Bass" video indicates, Trainor is a student of music that goes back decades, to the doo-wop 1950s. She professes Frank Sinatra is one of her inspirations. She's 20 years old, people. Some kids her age don't even know who Harry Connick, Jr. is.
The song's video is a bit of wink-wink fun and will soon join the gospels of "Psy-entology," my made-up religion for the Internet's most revered videos. But unlike "Gangnam Style" or Rebecca Black's "Friday," this song is saying something and people clearly are getting a message.
"Yeah, it's pretty clear, I ain't no size two/ But I can shake it, shake it, like I'm supposed to do..." are the first lines of consequence in the song, so right off you know it's an anthem to empowerment and a call for positive body image.
"If you got beauty, beauty, just raise 'em up/ 'Cause every inch of you is perfect, from the bottom to the top,.." she continues. The choice is yours, as Black Sheep once sang. Either become a victim of a negative vicious cycle or own that shit.
Or do lines like "I'm bringing booty back, go ahead and tell them skinny bitches that,..." and "I won't be no stick figure silicone Barbie doll..." suggest a "you can get with this or you can get with that" challenge that pits thin against not-as-thin? All this has people now referring to her as Meghan "Personal" Trainor and comparing her outspokenness and curviness to Meghan McCain (they do look a bit alike).
I believe I learned something about myself and this song while writing this. For one, where did booty go? I see it all the time, so take down the AMBER alerts. Not to give away too much about myself, but I never noticed it had vanished. I must be drinking the wrong milk, 'cause I didn't see a MISSING label on my carton. In other words, I'm definitely a Botticelli man.
The controversy over the song is it might encourage something called "skinny shaming."
The logic, as I initially considered it, went something like this: people who are thin and literally embody what nearly every modern societal notion of "the perfect body" is alleged to be are somehow now sad because of this song. These persons, either through stringent diet and exercise or simply by the blessings of the gods of vanity, are allegedly butt-hurt because the song proposes they lack junk in the trunk.
Story continues on the next page.