All About That Bass

Not since the Spinal Tap song "Big Bottom" has such an analog been made between the low end of the audio spectrum and the rear end of a woman. Unlike the Spinal Tap song, however, Trainor is celebrating her own posterior in this track, making it a song about confidence and positive body image.

Raised in a musical family on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, Meghan Trainor has been writing songs since she was 11 years old. After her family moved to Cape Cod, her parents built her daughter a recording studio, where Meghan worked on songs during her free time and also attended many music festivals throughout the country. Meghan won the 2011 Sonicbids Tennessee song contest when she was 17, and got signed to a songwriting deal with the publisher Big Yellow Dog right out of high school. In 2013, Trainor's boss at Big Yellow Dog put her together with Kevin Kadish, a 42-year-old producer whose resumé includes songs by Jason Mraz ("Wordplay") and Stacie Orrico ("(There's Gotta Be) More to Life"). Trainor, whose early songwriting credits include co-penning "DJ Tonight" and "I Like the Sound of That" for Rascal Flatts' Rewind album, made an immediate impression on Kadish, and the pair bonded over their love of '50s music. After kicking around ideas for lyrics and music for a few hours, they had the song written.

Kevin Kadish had the title "All About That Bass" written in his notebook when he and Trainor started their songwriting session. Kadish always envisioned that title as a song about booty, but he figured it would be good for a male hip-hop artist - a club tune about looking for a woman with a good low end. When he mentioned the title to Trainor, however, she loved it, since she often used the phrase "I'm all about that ____" to indicate something she liked (e.g., "I'm all about that Chris Hemsworth," "I'm all about that burrito"). When Kadish said the title, Trainor came up with "I'm all about that bass," and Kadish added the rejoinder, "no treble." This got them started on the song, which they wrote from a female perspective with the bass as a metaphor for her proud booty. "Once we started writing it, I remember his smile when he said 'skinny bitches,'" Trainor told Entertainment Weekly. "That's when we looked at each other like, 'We'll never make a dime off this, but I'm fine with that.'"