“Title” Falls From Set Expectation

This is the cover Meghan Trainors first album, Title.

This is the cover Meghan Trainor’s first album, “Title.”

Monica Brewer

by Monica Brewer

One of the biggest music artists that came about in 2014 is Meghan Trainor with her hits All About That Bass and Lips Are Movin’.  She’s been sweeping the music world off its feet with catchy tunes and a beat that leaves you for a loop.  Her first album, Title, has been talked about from sites such as fuse.tv and billboard.com, saying that her success didn’t get “buried in the last calendar year, and Title is set to prove it.”  Prove it tried, but it didn’t deliver on the count of “replayability and uniqueness, with beats used 30 years before she was born,” according to nydailynews.com.

Most of the songs on her album are about the theme of men in general, like many other songs by different artists.  Her title song that’s conveniently called “Title” left me with country bumpkin like beats declaring that she wants the title of being someone’s girlfriend.  One of the questions that the song left me was “Why be left to declare that ‘title’ from a guy that puts you in the friendzone?”  It sounds like a desperate call from a boy who won’t view you as something more, which addresses some of her other songs in the 15-song deluxe album that is a torture thanks to commercial interruptions (thanks Youtube.)

A couple of other songs that use this theme are “All About that Bass” and “Lips are Movin.”  While I don’t like many songs in the album, I have to admit that these two songs are catchy.  While they both have a similar beat (with Lips are Movin’ having a faster tempo,) they both address a topic. The message that “All About that Bass” addresses for me is body shaming and validating her self worth for men, while the message that “Lips are Movin’” leaves me with is that men are liars that will use you and then have to leave once they get caught. Maybe the message that should be conveyed here is the worth of yourself should be over the view of someone else.

There’s only one song that doesn’t address the subject of men in this album, and that’s “Walkashame” which speaks about everyone making mistakes when they…well, I’m not going to address that topic in particular.  Trainor further escalates the song that displays that we’ve all been in that person’s shoes, we’ve made mistakes, and that we shouldn’t judge them on their decisions.  We shouldn’t judge on decisions people make, but judge on how we would judge them.  Essentially, judge based on our behavior, not others.

In short, the album “Title” includes 15 songs that are mostly related to trouble with guys.  While the music was fine, the messages in the lyrics were not.  The message of the songs have been done to death and can be written and sung by other artists.  The songs in this album can be mistaken for Taylor Swift music if it wasn’t for the voice behind the music.  I love this artist, just not the music she sings.