“All the right junk, in all the right the places”
“Right place, right time” or so the saying goes. It’s a truism for success in the music industry that audiences often assume happens by accident, but in reality is the predictive talent of musicians and marketing men to know what we’re going to like next before we even knew it existed. In the case of ‘All About That Bass’ by country songwriter Meghan Trainor, everything about the track, it’s video and the artist just too perfect to have come about by luck.
Musically the track has an eclectic array of touch-points for it’s sound; Ben E King’s “Stand By Me” is called upon for the bass, the melody is a heady mix of doo wop and The Mavericks “Dance The Night Away,” whilst the vocals sound as wholesome as a Carly Rae Jepsen anthem only delivered with the sort of feminised sass that helped Beyonce ascend to superstar status.
As Trainor’s debut single one should always be wary of heaping too much praise too early, but for me there is nothing about All about that bass which has been left to chance. One look at the autumnal pastels tones of the video (which are so ‘now’ it hurts), the modernised dawn O’Porter approved high-street styled vintage and the songs it’s barely hidden “it’s okay to be a bit chunky” message strikes all the right mass-market approved values. A triumph for the marketing guru’s attempting to apply Lana Del Rey’s tried and tested template the Trainor brand.
What made Del Rey so compelling was that through her music she was playing a character; the tragic american beauty for the 00’s who cast an instantly identifiable silhouette. With ‘All About That Bass’ Trainor has managed to pull the same trick, but instead of casting herself as Audrey Hepburn, she’s Mae West; the feisty, fun and brassy Hollywood star. As it stands it’s too early to tell if this persona is here for the long run – I certainly hope so – because as first impressions go this as good as it gets.