Artist: Meghan Trainor
Title: Title EP
Genre: Pop

After a summer spent climbing the Billboard charts with the irresistible catchiness of “All About That Bass,” Cape Cod native Meghan Trainor hopes to prove she is ready to be a radio regular with the release of her Title EP.

If you made it this far into the year without hearing “All About That Bass” you may need to call Guinness and ask if you qualify for some type of record. The song, which also serves as Trainor’s debut single, has been everywhere in recent months, thanks in part to the perceived message of body positivity people think it shares. While it’s true the song does encourage people with weight problems to accept themselves, there’s also a negative side. You should be happy with who you are unless you’re a so-called ’skinny bitch,’ in which case you better step aside because Meghan is coming through with plans to potentially steal your man. That’s a conversation for another time, however, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

“Bass” leads Trainor’s Title EP, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the way marketing works in this genre. The release has four tracks in total, with the title song being the second single to be pushed to radio. That track, which premiered online early Monday morning (September 8), finds Trainor telling the man she’s been sleeping with that the time has come to give her the title she deserves. Being a hookup isn’t enough anymore and Trainor is ready for something more, which she discusses at length against a beat that is incredibly infectious. I’m not so sure I back the message that women should use sex as a tool to get what they want from men rather than simply having a conversation about their mutual wants and needs in a relationship, but after a half dozen spins the hook won me over to the point I stopped reading into what was being said in the verses. Take that as you will.

The two songs kept from the public before release, “Dear Future Husband” and “Close Your Eyes,” feel more like half-assed takes on the record’s previous tracks than original cuts themselves. “Dear Future Husband” boasts a 1950s rock sound not too distant from “All About That Bass,” with lyrics informing men that they need to know how to treat ladies, even when they’re acting crazy. It’s the kind of thing you would expect from a Broadway musical written by someone who spent too much time watching Hairspray, only without the memorable musical moments that make that show so great. It’s fluff from beginning to end, and after hearing the two previous tracks it does extremely little to showcase Trainor’s diversity. If anything, it makes her seem like a one-note act, capable of writing cutesy songs about surface level emotions and nothing more.

The closer, otherwise known as “Close Your Eyes,” drops the throwback sound and embraces acoustic guitar, at least at first. The song teases a modern ballad-like structure at first before slipping back into Trainor’s signature retro sound when the chorus hits. The song touches on learning to love yourself and the place you’ve found yourself in life, which falls in line with the type of lyrical content found elsewhere on the record. The slowed pace is certainly a nice touch, but overall “Close Your Eyes” is nothing we haven’t heard before, and to be entirely honest it carries on about thirty seconds too long.

With a hit like “All About That Bass” already at radio and not a single EP or album in stores, RCA is probably hoping Title will secure Meghan Trainor’s spot amongst the who’s who of pop stars in 2015. Unfortunately, other than the title track there is nothing to this release that gives us any reason to care about what Trainor may have to say or offer in the future. It’s as if Trainor and her team knew “Bass” would be a hit and set out to duplicate it with various ever-so-slight variations. This would work if the results proved interesting, but there just isn’t enough attitude or originality to make it work. I will continue to spin “All About That Bass” until I cannot stand it any longer, but I see no reason anyone would spend more than a day or two with the Title EP before dropping the two lackluster tracks from their digital libraries and moving on to whatever flavor of the week develops next.

SCORE: 5/10
Review written by James Shotwell Follow @utgjames

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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