Meghan Trainor on making her 'raw' new album about motherhood
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Meghan Trainor's music has been stuck in fans' heads since she hit the airwaves eight years ago with her mega-hit "All About That Bass" and doo-wop-tinged debut album, Title, a bubbly record that updated classic song stylings with a modern twist. Now she's stepping back into a sound that fits her like a glove — only this time she's made it more mature and more personal.
"The concepts are way more intense," Trainor tells EW of her upcoming full-length, Takin' It Back. "In previous albums, there would be a simple love song or an 'I'm going to be confident today' song. These songs are like, 'Y'all, I'm struggling. This is real, but we're all in this together. Who's with me?' It's just more real and raw."
Takin' It Back is not only a reflection of her growth as a singer — there's a fuller, deeper texture to her voice — but also the first album she's put out since the birth of her son in February 2021. The first track she wrote for it was the ballad "Remind Me," which she says carried her through a very vulnerable moment in her life.
"I started writing it after I had a C-section and was covered in stretch marks with a scar crossing them," she recalls. "I've been open about my struggles with my body, and this was just a whole new layer. I didn't go in thinking, 'I'm going to write a sad song or a song about how I'm feeling.' It just kind of happened, and it was a great therapy session."
Lauren Dunn Meghan Trainor
She co-wrote the song with another mother of a young son and worked with a producer who had two baby boys. "We were all in that room tired, and I was just talking about how I was feeling at that time," Trainor says. "I am the only one out of all my friends who's married and has a baby, so I was very lonely during the pregnancy and felt like no one could really understand what I was feeling." She has since found a "mom group" with whom she shares her newfound joys and woes, but that initial feeling of isolation forced her to get in closer touch with her emotions, which in turn enriched her songwriting.
"I used to go in with just the melody and be like, 'We'll figure out the words later,'" she says. "And now I go in with a concept of like, 'Remind me because I forgot any positive things about myself. Show me love like my husband does.' Or I'll go in with, 'Don't I make it look easy? Because this s--- is not easy, but I make it look good, right?'"
Meghan Trainor's new album, 'Takin' It Back'
Crafting her fourth studio album led to other realizations as well, like just how terrible it is not to have paid family leave in the United States. "I've been bitching and complaining when I can't see my kid, but I get weekends off and some extra days off and I'm like, 'Oh, no. Like, regular jobs are every single day, maybe even Saturday, and you don't get to see your kid at all.' It's very eye-opening and heartbreaking, especially in America, how you only get a few weeks with your baby then it's back to work! Other countries get a whole year for both parents."
While the pop star admits to feeling "a lot of stress" and "overwhelmed" since she joined the ranks of working mothers, she also considers herself lucky to have a whole "army" helping her raise her son. "I have my family literally living in my house with me, and everyone here. My managers are family, and they're always there for me, so my kid has the most love and protection any child could have. But I think of single moms and single working moms and believe they are the actual heroes in life. They are superheroes walking among us."
She continues, "I can barely go pee — and I have a husband and my mom is here. I'm like, 'How do they get all this done?' I can't fathom it."
Motherhood has also taught her how "precious" life is. "You know how the clichés say, 'You don't know what love is until you have your own child'? It's just more chances of your heart being destroyed because you love something so much," she says. "Like when he was a week old, I cried every time I thought anything bad could happen. I had all these racing, horrifying thoughts, and it was just because of how much I loved this nugget, this new person. Everything is just extra important. It's a wake-up call."
While Trainor will be hard at work promoting Takin' It Back this fall, touring isn't in the cards. Invoking the names of working-mom musicians like Pink and Beyoncé ("I know! She's amazing, like a whole different breed!"), she admits she knows it can be done, but she also has the urge "to get pregnant immediately."
Says Trainor, "Everyone keeps saying, 'Just get pregnant, start your family.' They ask me what success means to me. And I'm like, 'Success to me is my family of four kids and we're all hanging out in the backyard.' That's what I want."
Takin' It Back is out Oct. 21.
Make sure to check out more of EW's Fall Music Preview, running all this week through Sept. 30.
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