Review: Meghan Trainor — Takin’ It Back
--
Since she stomped to the top of the charts with her body-positive hit single “All About That Bass” in 2014, Meghan Trainor has successfully experimented with several musical genres, from R&B and hip-hop on her album “Thank You”, to dance-pop on her album “Treat Myself”. She has now come up with her latest LP, “Takin’ It Back”, and as its title suggests, it’s a throwback to the doo-wop of her major label debut, the multi-Platinum-certified “Title”. Meghan Trainor has called the new album her “Title 2.0”. With “Takin’ It Back”, she returns to her roots, to the mix of pop, doo-wop, and the popular genre of the 50s that made her fall in love with music and consequently made the rest of the world fall in love with Meghan Trainor.
Her new album revisits themes that are close to her heart: body positivity, womanhood, independence, the impact of social media, self-confidence, and love. She has talked about these themes in previous albums, of course. But on “Takin’ It Back”, the singer does it from a new point of view, with a new maturity. As a married woman and a mother, she has evolved, and even if the themes and genre of “Title” are still meaningful to her, her music and lyrics have evolved with her.
With her album’s first single, “Bad For Me”, Trainor tackles the heavy and difficult subject of toxic, unhealthy love, particularly when it comes to family members. In an emotional duet with Teddy Swims, the blue-eyed soul song sounds like a real-life story. The touching lyrics don’t shy away from the reality of such a relationship: “Please don’t make promises that you can’t keep / Your best intentions end up hurting me / No matter what, I love you endlessly / I know we’re blood, but this love’s bad for me”. This song is both an acknowledgement of the daily heartbreak caused by toxic love, and an encouragement to leave it behind. In one fell swoop, the singer manages to give us a catchy tune and a musical hug.
Not one to shy away from reality, Meghan Trainor takes on another tough topic in “Don’t I Make It Look Easy”. This pop song could be a redo or a sequel to “All About That Bass”. In this track, the singer has taken the gloves off, dissing the social media era and the obsession with appearances in a cheerful tone that contrasts sharply the seriousness of her lyrics: “Don’t I make it look easy? / Well I’m…
