Meghan Trainor’s newest, “No,” isn’t as sassy and brassy as 2014’s “All that Bass,” in fact, it’s so different it doesn’t fit easily into any category, stylistically, and as far as the lyrics go, she’s speaking text language, or maybe it’s English with a digital spin, which, when added to her in-your-face feminism, makes this song a challenge for a baby boomer to relate to.
For example, I’m sure I don’t understand this:
blah, blah, blah, blah, I be like nah to the
I, to the no, no, no
And here’s her post-modern feminism, which is far more aggressive and fierce than the feminism of my generation, which championed gender equality and respect for all.
Thank you in advance
I don’t wanna dance
Don’t need your hands all over me
If I wanna man then ima get a man
But it’s never my priority.
Trainor, who won the 2015 Grammy for “Best New Artist,” wrote the song after Epic Records chairman L. A. Reid insisted that what she was offering wasn’t top of the line. Hurt and angry, she wrote out her frustrations–his rejection was her inspiration– she submitted the song the very next day.
She’s what used to be referred to as zaftig—today we say “a few extra pounds”—and all of it is just adorable.
She’s had a string of her own hits plus duets with John Legend and Charlie Puth, and none of those songs sound remotely like “No.”
It’s been out about a week and half, and you can expect “No” to be at the top of the Top 40 and Adult Top 40 charts very very soon.
Esoterica
Trainor’s work reveals for us an alternative mode of imagination, one that unsettles security’s orientation to unanticipated surprises, one that is, as Jane Bennett describes, ‘enchanting.’
-Lousie Amoore
The Politics of Possibility, Risk and Security Beyond Probability, 2013