To all intents and purposes, it’s good pop music.Įxcept it’s missing one thing: a point. So Me Too is yet another song that doesn’t over-stretch itself, isn’t concerned with using respectable forms and is directly tied to the singer’s personality. Again, it’s a step forward for her and one that marks a movement away from the “respectable” sound of the innocent 50’s to a more challenging one. The doo-wop sound doesn’t do that anymore (it’s too closely associated with her, and it’s not exactly like old fashioned music is rare on the radio nowadays) but Me Too does, shocking you because it’s exactly the opposite of what you’re expecting Trainor to sound like. This might sound like damning with faint praise but Meghan Trainor is meant to be a subversive figure: as such, her work should be actively trying to subvert expectations. It’s highly processed and wobbly: in short, it doesn’t sound like a Meghan Trainor song. Unlike anything from her last album, there’s a genuine accusation of competence to be made here. It isn’t over-stretching itself, it works entirely on it’s own terms, and it works within a framework in which Meghan Trainor’s personality fits. Add to this over-the-top egotism an over-the-top club beat (and note how I’ve frequently equated ego and club songs on this blog, making them good matches for each other) and you have a song which fundamentally makes sense as a cohesive piece. More than that, it’s a song which requires Trainor to be a sickly egotist, something she does well. Me Too, much like No, fixes this by actually being very simple: it’s a bog-standard brag track, nothing more, nothing less. The problem with Trainor’s first album, quite surprisingly, was that her work was actually ridiculously complicated and thus somewhat out of her reach. You see, improvement implies that someone was making mistakes they don’t make anymore, while progression implies that they’ve stopped making old mistakes and are now making brand new ones. If Meghan Trainor’s No represents a step forwards for her though, then her next single, Me Too, proves that she hasn’t improved as much as she’s progressed. As an inverse of this, Charlie Puth has recently written a good song by not trying to be respectable and by writing something that fits his public persona, while Meghan Trainor has finally written a good song by simplifying her work to the point where she’s actually capable of doing it. The problem with most current (Post-Club era) pop music is that it’s being written by hacks who are over-stretching themselves, trying too hard to be respectable, and (as a result) are writing things which they’re not suited to doing. Seriously, One Dance does not deserve to be No. 1 for way too long now and I need something to talk about. Yeah, I apologise about all these Meghan Trainor posts.
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