Meghan Elizabeth Trainor (born December 22, 1993) who is also known as Meghan Trainor, 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 five studio albums with the label and has received various accolades, including the 2016 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

 

Name: Meghan Elizabeth Trainor
Also known as: Meghan Trainor
Born: December 22, 1993 (age 28) Nantucket, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation: Singer-songwriter, television, personality
Years active: 2009–present
Spouse: Daryl Sabara ​(m. 2018)​
Children: 1
Musical career
Origin: North Eastham, Massachusetts, U.S.
Genres: Pop R&B doo-wop blue-eyed soul
Instrument(s): Vocals
Labels: Epic, Honest OG

Trainor became interested in music from a young age; she wrote, recorded, and produced three independently released acoustic albums, Meghan Trainor (2009), I’ll Sing with You, and Only 17 (2010). She began writing and producing songs for other artists in 2013. In 2015, Trainor released her pop and hip hop major-label debut studio album, Title, which included the top-10 singles “Lips Are Movin” and “Like I’m Gonna Lose You”; it debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200. The single “No” led her follow-up album, the R&B album Thank You (2016), both of which reached number three on the respective charts. Trainor created her third album with Epic, the electronic dance music-influenced Treat Myself (2020), as an attempt to adapt to ongoing musical trends. She followed this with the holiday album A Very Trainor Christmas later that year. Trainor’s fifth studio album, Takin’ It Back, was released on October 21, 2022, and produced the UK Singles Chart top-10 single “Made You Look”.

Trainor’s lyrics frequently include themes of womanhood, body image, and personal empowerment, though they have at times been criticized as antifeminist or regressive. 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, she 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). Trainor’s accolades include a Grammy Award, four ASCAP Pop Music Awards, and two Billboard Music Awards.

Early Life
Meghan Elizabeth Trainor was born on December 22, 1993, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, to jewelers Kelli 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 the age of 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”.

 

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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 taking her to venues at which production companies were searching for new artists and songwriters. At 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.

Career
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, all the proceeds from which benefited 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 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 decided to pursue her songwriting career and signed with Big Yellow Dog Music in 2012. She began her career as a songwriter-for-hire because of her ability to compose in a variety of genres, publishing songs for other artists but being unsure about becoming a recording artist herself. 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.

2014–2015:
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.

Meghan Trainor – Made You Look

Awards and Accolades
Trainor has won four ASCAP Pop Music Awards, two Billboard Music Awards, a People’s Choice Award, and a Grammy Award. Trainor was awarded Best Female Artist at the 2009 International Acoustic Music Awards and the Grand Prize at the 2010 New Orleans Songwriter’s Festival; she has also won the 2011 Tennessee Concerts Song Contest and the John Lennon Love Song Songwriting Contest. She was named the “Breakthrough Artist of the Year” by the Music Business Association in 2014.

Among her achievements, she became the 21st female artist whose debut single peaked at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, and the fifth female artist to follow up her chart-topping debut single with another top-five release. On the Billboard Year-End charts for 2015, Trainor was listed seventh on Top Artists and second on Top Female Artists. Billboard ranked her at number 40 on their list of the top artists of the 2010s. Title was placed 98th on the magazine’s “Greatest of All Time Billboard 200 Albums by Women” list, with “All About That Bass” ranking at number 69 on the all inclusive list for singles. As of October 2015, “All About That Bass” was the only debut single by any artist to accumulate a billion views on YouTube.

Discography
Title (2015)
Thank You (2016)
Treat Myself (2020)
A Very Trainor Christmas (2020)
Takin’ It Back (2022)