10 Surprising Facts About Meghan Trainor

One of the biggest new pop stars is Meghan Trainor, the singer behind the catchy tune “All About That Bass.” The song shot Meghan to fame in a relatively short period of time, partially due to the viral nature of the music video and possibly due to the positive body image message behind the song. But there are some facts about pop music’s new “it” girl that you might find surprising.

1. Meghan Trainor started writing music at age 7.

According to ABC News, Meghan wrote her first song when she was just a child. “My first song was about how happy I was that my aunt married this Trinidadian man named Burton Toney,” Trainor explained. “You know, ‘Heart and Soul’ on the piano? I just wrote lyrics over that because that’s all I could play, and I thought I was a star.”

2. Meghan Trainor is influenced by Caribbean music. Trainor spoke to Billboard about how her uncle came from Trinidad and Tobago, which has strongly influenced the sound of her own music. “Ever since I was 7, I grew up listening to Soca, the genre that’s from there. It’s my favourite sound,” Meghan said. “So, we put a band together and we would play Soca. And then I would go up and play my little pop songs. It was fun!”

3. It only took 8 minutes to write “Lips Are Moving.” Trainor and her producer put together her two biggest hits in less than an hour. “All About That Bass” only took 45 minutes to write. “I’m a very fast writer,” Trainor admitted.

4. Meghan is a multi-instrumentalist. She can sing, she can play the piano, the guitar, the trumpet and the ukulele.

5. She didn’t expect “All About That Bass” to get popular — at all. “I was real nervous,” Meghan described the process of writing the song. “I was just trying to impress [my producer Kevin Kadish]… And he had a title, ‘All Bass, No Treble.’ And I said, ‘we should do it like that because it’s, like, swag. It’s cool. It’s what us kids say.'”

6. Nobody else wanted to sing “All About That Bass.” Despite the massive success that Meghan Trainor’s first hit as found in the past few months, Digital Spy claims the song was offered to a few other pop stars like Beyoncé and Adele, but nobody wanted it. Meghan earned the right to sing her own song when label boss LA Reid suggested it.

7. Meghan’s mom thinks “All About That Bass” is annoying. According to Time, Trainor’s mom has admitted she’s sick of the song. “My mom just said, ‘Wow, that’s pretty annoying now.’ But she still loves it.”

8. She doesn’t hate skinny girls. Despite the plus-size pride of “All About That Bass” and the line “I’m bringing booty back / Go ahead and tell them skinny b****es…”, Meghan Trainor thinks skinny people are beautiful too. “I didn’t get a record deal to write a song to bash skinny people,” Trainor said. “I just wrote a song about how I’m comfortable with my body size, and if people can relate to that, that’s amazing.”

9. Meghan Trainor got a music deal in high school. Trainor was discovered by country music producer Big Yellow Dog at a songwriting convention. They flew her to Nashville to audition and signed her as soon as she turned 18.

10. Meghan is a huge fan of Sam Smith. Trainor claims to adore the other major pop star to emerge in 2014. “I listened to his album hundreds and hundreds of times, and the fact that he’s actually a really cool dude and I can call him a friend now is amazing.”