Okay, so if I say the phrase, because you know
I'm all about that bass. Oh, it just, it auto
completes in my head. Instantly, right? That
bass, no trouble. It's like a reflex for anyone
who was near radio in 2014. Exactly. And that's
usually where the conversation about that song
just stops. We file Meghan Trainor's all about
that bass under, you know, massive earworm. Yeah,
candy colored everywhere. Maybe you got sick
of it. Which is totally fair. But digging into
the stack of articles and chart histories we
have for this deep dive, I realized I had the
whole story wrong. Oh, so I just assumed it was,
you know, a standard pop product. A label decides,
hey, we need a body positivity anthem, hire some
writers and boom. That is the usual playbook.
But this was definitely not that. The story is
messy. It was a sleeper hit that broke. like
every rule in the industry at the time. It really
did. And we're not just talking a minor hit.
It was number one for eight straight weeks in
the U .S. That's a staggering run. And looking
at the sources, it became more than a song. It
was a catalyst, wasn't it? It forced this huge
global conversation about body image. A conversation
pop culture was maybe not quite ready for. Definitely
not. Because for every person who felt seen by
that song, there was a critic pointing to faux
feminism. or skinny shaming. It was a total lightning
rod. So that's our mission for this deep dive.
We are going to go way past that hook and figure
out how a 40 minute writing session between two
Nashville outsiders ended up as a diamond certified
record. And we're going to get into all that
friction, too. You really can't talk about this
song without talking about the backlash. To get
how unlikely this all was, you have to look at
where Meghan Trainor was before 2014 because
she was not on the cover of magazines. Far from
it. And that context is, I mean, it's totally
crucial to the song's DNA. She basically given
up on being an artist. They did release albums
before, though, right? Yeah, three independent
ones, but they didn't go anywhere. So by 2012,
she signs a publishing deal in Nashville. And
for anyone who doesn't know the industry jargon,
a publishing deal means you're writing songs
for other people. Exactly. You're the person
behind the curtain. She moved to Nashville to
be a professional songwriter. The stardom thing
was, in her mind, over. But why? Why give up
on being the front woman? It's actually really
sad when you read her quotes from that time.
She just didn't think she fit the pop star mold.
She said she saw herself as one of the chubby
girls who would never be an artist. Wow. So she
literally doesn't see a physical space for herself
on a pop stage. None. Which explains why she
was just there to, you know, grind it out as
a writer. OK, so that sets the scene. Fast forward
to June 2013. Right. Carla Wallace from her publishing
company decides to play matchmaker. She sets
Megan up on a writing session with a guy named
Kevin Kaddish. And was Kaddish like a big name?
Not really. An industry veteran, but not a star
maker. He even called the session a blind date.
They'd never met. They had no idea if they'd
click. That sounds so awkward. Just hi, nice
to meet you. Now let's write a hit song. Pretty
much. But they bonded almost immediately. And
not over modern pop music. What was it then?
They were both obsessed with 1950s and 60s music.
Do walk. Which, we should point out, was not
cool in 2013. Not even a little bit. We were
at peak EDM. But they're in there vibing on oldies,
and Kaddish pulls out this list of song titles
he's been keeping. He just had a list of titles.
Yeah, it's a common songwriter thing. And on
that list was the phrase, all bass, no treble.
And that just clicked for Trainor. It was this
amazing cognitive leap. For Kaddish, it was probably
just a clever audio pun. But Megan immediately
saw a metaphor for the human body. Okay, let's
unpack that a little because it's the whole song.
Right. She basically mapped sound frequencies
to body types. Bass is the low enso, thickness
curves. Treble is the high enso, thinness. That's
actually a pretty smart piece of imagery for
a pop song. It's simple, but it works on a couple
of levels. It does. And it came from a really
personal place. She started channeling all her
own frustrations from her teenage years. And
Kiddush got it too. He told Rolling Stone he
had his own body image issues growing up. So
it was this shared insecurity that sparked it.
Exactly. Yeah. And the sources all say it happened
incredibly fast. How fast are we talking? 40
minutes. 40 minutes to write a song that went
diamond? That's insane. I take longer to write
an email. Start to finish. Kiddush built the
beat, and Trainor basically freestyled the hook
right over it. It wasn't overthinking, it was
just pure flow. Okay, so they finish the demo.
They have this incredibly catchy retro anthem.
The labels must have jumped on it immediately.
You would think. But nope. They pitched it to
multiple labels and the answer was a hard no.
Every single one. Nobody wanted it. Why? Was
it the lyrics? It was the sound. You have to
put yourself back in 2014. The radio was all
Calvin Harris, Avicii, Zedd, just massive synth
drops. Right. Everything sounded like a giant,
glorious robot. Exactly. And then this song comes
along that sounds like it's from 1958. The labels
told them flat out, this is too retro. Rerecord
it with synthesizers. They wanted to turn it
into an EDM track. They wanted to strip out everything
that made it special. And here's the crucial
moment. Megan and Kevin said no. Good for them.
They absolutely stuck to their guns. They believed
that the original demo sound was where the magic
was. Let's get into that sound, because it's
a weird mix. It's not just oldies. No, it's this
whole genre -bending cocktail. Slate Magazine
had this great description. They called it Vintage
White Girl, Italo -Latin Soul. That is a mouthful.
What does Italo -Latin Soul even mean, instrument
-wise? It means it's organic. Kadish played the
real drums, the guitar, the bass. You've got
a Hammond organ in there. And that saxophone,
right? That low honking sound. A baritone sax,
yeah. That gives it that rhythmic drive. And
the hand claps and percussion, that's Meghan
Trainor herself. It just feels human and fun.
It has a walking pace. Critics called it a scatting
tempo and a shimmying melody. There's some wild
comparisons, actually, to K -pop and even to
the band Phish. Fish? Really? It's that sort
of bouncy, infectious rhythm. It feels familiar,
even if you don't know why. So, okay, they have
this song. The labels all hate it. How does it
get from the rejection pile to L .A. Reid's desk?
It's just a classic case of getting in the right
room. She gets a meeting with an A &R guy at
Epic who likes it enough to get her in front
of Reid himself a week later. And this is the
big moment. But she doesn't just play the demo.
She walks in with a ukulele. You're kidding.
A ukulele audition for the chairman of a major
record label? That is risky. It's so bold. But
she performs it right there, stripped down. And
it worked. Ellie Reed signed her 20 minutes later.
20 minutes. He called the song Lightning in a
Bottle. And did he make them add the synth? He
did not. He completely validated them. He decided
the original demo they made would be the final
master. That is just an incredible story. But
once that song was out in the world, things got
complicated. We have to talk about the lyrics.
We do. Because this is where the story pivots
from this fun underdog tale to a full -on cultural
battleground. On its face, the message seems
so positive. Traynor was trying to push back
against the silicone Barbie dolls and photoshopped
magazines. Right. For millions of people, especially
young women, it was this huge anthem of self
-acceptance. It got compared to Christina Aguilera's
Beautiful. What? But not everyone heard it that
way. The backlash was pretty swift. Let's start
with the skinny shaming thing. That was the first
big critique. It was. Critics argued that to
lift up curvy women, she was tearing down thin
women. By calling them trouble. Or spig figures.
And of course, there's the line, go ahead and
tell them skinny bitches that. Yeah, I remember
hearing that and just thinking, oh, that's a
choice. It felt unnecessarily divisive. Exactly.
The argument from places like Vox was that true
body positivity has to include all bodies. If
you're just flipping the hierarchy, you haven't
really fixed the problem. Did she ever respond
to that? She did. She basically said she didn't
work this hard to hate on skinny people and that
she was kind of just joking around. But there
was a deeper critique too, right? The faux feminism
argument. This one is more complex. It centers
on the male gaze, specifically the lyric, boys
like a little more booty to hold at night. Ah,
okay. So the argument is it's okay to love your
body because men will find you attractive. Precisely.
Critics said it's not real empowerment if your
self -worth is still tied to male validation.
It's not love yourself for you. It's love yourself
because it'll get you a guy. That's a really
important distinction. It kind of makes the self
-love conditional. It does. And if you need proof
that the industry knew that line was an issue,
you just have to look at the Radio Disney edit.
Oh, I love radio edits. They tell you everything.
What did they change? Well, there was the normal
stuff. Shape it, shake it, make it, make it.
But the big change was that line, the booty line.
In the Disney version, it becomes, get this,
boys like the girls for the beauty they hold
inside. Wait. What? I know. They changed booty
to hold at night to beauty they hold inside.
That fundamentally changes the entire thesis
of the song. It's a massive pivot. It ironically
fixes the feminist critique by making it about
inner beauty. It's wild. That is fascinating.
The corporate censorship actually made the song's
message, well, better. Or at least less complicated.
So the lyrics are causing this whole stir. But
the video was a phenomenon in itself. All the
pastels, the dancing. The whole aesthetic. Directed
by Fatima Robinson. But here's the detail that
really got me from the research. What's that?
Despite the whole love yourself theme, Trainor
said that the first time she saw the finished
video, she cried. Tears of joy? No. She was insecure.
She didn't like how she looked on camera. She
said she went in and edited the crap out of it
herself. Wow. So here she is, about to become
the global face of self -acceptance, and she's
struggling with her own image in the editing
room. It just shows how real that insecurity
was for her. Writing the song didn't just magically
cure it. But the video came out. And it blew
up, partly because of a platform that doesn't
even exist anymore. R .I .P. Vine. Explain the
Vine connection. So one of the dancers in the
video was a big Vine star named Sion Michalopi.
He's the guy who does the splits. Oh yeah, I
remember him. He shared the video with his followers
and it just created this viral loop that pushed
it into the YouTube algorithm. It was a perfect
storm. But like the lyrics, the video brought
its own controversy. Specifically, accusations
of cultural appropriation. Yes. This came from
critics at places like Vice and The Fader. They
pointed to her singing style. which some described
as a blast. And the visuals, too. Right. There
are scenes with her surrounded by twerking black
dancers. The critique was that she was using
black culture as a prop to seem cool and edgy
while still being a very safe white pop star.
It's that classic problem of trying on a culture
without living the experience. Exactly. It's
a complicated conversation that followed a lot
of artists at the time, but it was definitely
part of the song story. Okay, so let's zoom out.
You have this retro song, controversial lyrics,
a viral video, huge debates. What was the actual
tangible impact? The impact was something Vogue
literally called the era of the big booty. I
remember that. The year of the booty. It was
everywhere. And it wasn't just Trainor. You had
JLo's song Booty and Nicki Minaj's Anaconda all
in the same year. 2014. It was a full -on cultural
shift. A massive one. But Trader's Song was the
one that crossed over to, you know, the mainstream
grocery store radio audience. And when you change
the culture that much, there are real -world
effects. You found some data that just floored
me. This is my favorite So What metric. Billboard
reported that one New York doctor saw a 25 %
increase in Brazilian buttock augmentation surgeries
in 2014. Wait, really? People were getting surgery
because of this trend? It sure seems like it.
And a company that makes padded underwear called
Booty Pop saw 47 % jump in demand. That is the
power of a pop song. It didn't just reflect culture,
it physically altered it. That's wild. It really
is. And you know you've hit peak culture when
the parodies start. Oh, the parodies, they were
inescapable. You had NASA interns doing all about
that space. Which was great. The Holderness family
had that huge Thanksgiving viral hit all about
that bass. More butter, no treble, I can still
hear it. And even a Star Wars one? All about
that bass. No rebels. The hook was just a perfect
meme format. And the sales numbers. Just unbelievable.
It was the best -selling song by a female artist
in the 2010s in the U .S., Diamond Certified,
number one in 58 countries. 58. For a debut single.
From a writer who thought she'd never be an artist.
It shattered records. So, to bring it all home...
We have a song written in 40 minutes that gets
rejected by everyone. It gets signed on the strength
of a ukulele performance. And then it just takes
over the entire planet. But in doing so, it forces
these incredibly difficult, messy conversations
about body image, feminism, and race. When you
lay it out like that, it sounds like fiction,
but that's the story. It really feels like a
double -edged sword. It is. On one hand, it genuinely
empowered millions of people. You can't take
that away. That's a real tangible good. But on
the other. It also showed how hard it is to talk
about body positivity in a three -minute pop
song without alienating someone or falling into
a trap like seeking male validation. It's messy.
It's very messy. But it did open a door. Looking
back, it was a pivotal moment where pop music
started to sound and look a little different.
And that's a legacy worth having, I think, even
with all the controversy. Absolutely. Before
we wrap, I want to leave you with one final thought
to mull over. And it goes back to that Radio
Disney edit. The booty to beauty swap. It just
sticks with me. If that line about physical validation
was so easily swapped for something so profound
about inner beauty. Does that suggest the original
lyric was just a calculated commercial choice
to begin with? Or maybe did the corporate censorship
accidentally create a better, more meaningful
song than the one that was originally written?
That's the question. Sometimes the edit reveals
what could have been. Thanks for listening to
this deep dive. We'll catch you on the next one.